On seeing a tree through trees feeling outside my own tensions.
On picking up a chip of wood and using it to worry.
On rubbing things and contemplating the great oasis of smells.
Silence was there, wearing all black.
It was days past laundry day, she announced.
About a speaking Silence:
What would make someone choose a name like that?
My question falls back towards me, and the grass bends under it.
Five of us scooting along, smiling into the green light
utterly undazzled.
Snagged on the silence, I ask
“What are the good albums?”
Madeline makes her reply in short.
“What ARE good albums?”
[Laughter]
He had placed a hand on the back of my thigh and smiled,
a rough scrawl in the language of touch.
He had held me.
He had opened a small chasm whose depth couldn’t be safely judged.
At the edge he’d lingered.
And a silence had sprung up there, as weeds.
Evelyn C. McLean 