book and cover design by Ella Gray
OF SOME RENOWN
For some time now, I have lived anonymously. No one appears to think it odd. They think the old are, well, what they seem. Yet see that great egret
at the marsh's edge, solitary, still? Mere pretense that stillness. His silence is a lie. In his own pond he is of some renown, a stalker, a catcher of fish. Watch him.
photo by David Conrad
EVENING
Down in the woods, a thrush repeats the measured triads of his flute-like song, recounts the old rhapsodic tales of lost serenities and peace.
As darkness deepens, his voice grows still and I am left holding silence in a thin white cup, gold-banded, rare.
ON THE NATURE OF SILENCE
Silence is not made from wood or ivory, nor wrought from iron or absence, that absence of which lilacs speak, waiting out the winter.
Silence is a meeting place beloved of the Holy, a place of returning. I go, as to a meadow bright with promises of June, a meadow where bobolinks still rise and yield themselves to song.