Conscience tells me
not to be silent.
When poetry is duty
is it still a poem?
But in these times,
being human
gives everyone the duty
the imperative
to speak against
all the kinds of destruction
by which
we are taking
ourselves
into silence.
A Quadrille written for Shhhhhhh.......Quiet, Please! at dVerse.
(Quadrille: 44 words excluding title, which in this instance must include some form of the word 'silent'.)
Listening to the thin squeak
of my radio turned low
playing non-stop jazz
all day and night, but not
to disturb the neighbours …
I fill my dark with
other people’s dreams.
I read, too – stories that all
end happily, they are all alike.
Afterwards, I forget them.
I see me small, on a vast lawn – a smooth green lawn surrounded by bushes, some of them berry bushes, others flowers. There are two huge weeping willows further down the yard, one on either side of the vegetable garden past the end of the lawn, beyond the wooden trellis summer-house.
I am all alone. The two-storey back of the house looms large and flat. My mother, upstairs, sometimes looks out the distant kitchen window to check on me. Her face is tiny, far away and pale, ghost-like.
Yet I don’t feel lonely. All around me the garden throbs with life. Insects are drawn to the flowers, small birds to the berries. The willow leaves, on their long dangling fronds that sweep the ground, rustle and toss, lightly and gently, in intermittent breeze.
I talk in my mind to clouds, to birds, to insects, to berries … to the rising trunks and curtaining fronds of both the soft green willows. I talk to the listeners under the ground and the watchers behind the sky.
When they reply, it is not as if to a small child. They answer all my questions, calmly. I feel rather than hear their answers. I feel, too, their assurance of my understanding.
My young mother, enclosed in the house, does, I think (I think in hindsight) feel fearfully alone … lonely …
Written for Poets and Storytellers United, Friday Writings #219.
