There has to be a word for the unexplained —
a word for the sound of a nightingale
changing to whatever that bird heard last.
We have better words to describe a chasm
eating all sound dropping in
or a trellis of roses wrapping upwards.
When unobscured light reaches its destination,
it does not make a noise. I never heard
a spider tiptoe on its web as it gives or sways,
nor when dawn congeals into greying darkness.
We can hear despair, the accumulation of sparrows,
the blinds opening their clatter, the blink of traffic lights,
the hizz of florescent bulbs.
But not once, did I hear a sound
the minute after people died, separating out
of their body, into a final silence, not even an Ah.
Martin Willitts Jr is a retired Librarian living in Syracuse, NY. He is a poetry editor for Comstock Review, and a judge for the New York State Fair Poetry Contest. He won the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Award and Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, June, 2015, Editor’s Choice. He has over 20 chapbooks including the winner of the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, The Wire Fence Holding Back the World (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 11 full-length collections including Dylan Thomas and the Writing Shed (FutureCycle Press, 2017), Three Ages of Women (Deerbrook Editions, 2017).
califragile.org 