You must be friends with silence to hear.
~ Joy Harjo, “Singing Everything”
The demands: stand off, stay away,
no closer, do not touch
while our simian hands reach,
grab, ache to hold. Although born
opposable, into separate-ness
we join an audience, a tribe, or my party
of one in my quiet house. Even the spring
sun smears an aura of gray haze. My stockpile
of caution weighs down with beans and soap.
Wipes for a door knob. The steering wheel.
This, they say, keeps me safe. Solitary
confinement: a reward of being old
and vulnerable. Four walls to climb
with spare windows to the woods.
A walk on old ice to the mailbox offers
a song of the first mourning dove of March.
My tai chi-waving hands-like-clouds
stir a communal hum in this silence,
forlorn whisper of boots on gravel.
Tricia Knoll’s Poetry collections –
- How I Learned to Be White (available on Amazon) received the 2018 Indie Book Award for Motivational Poetry.
- Broadfork Farm – poems about a small organic farm in Trout Lake, Washington, its people and creatures is available on Amazon and from The Poetry Box.
- Ocean’s Laughter, a book of lyric and eco-poetry about Manzanita, Oregon. Look at Amazon.com or for Reviews.
- Urban Wild, a poetry chapbook available from Finishing Line Press that explores interactions of humans and wildlife in urban habitat.
califragile.org 