DEEP TIME ENCOUNTERS

There is no silence in the world

Like the silence of the rock before life was

– Robert Hass

Every dose is overdose,

every thing that’s done’s

done to death.

Good old ineffability –

that fine froth, that gossamer cliché –

runs amok and bites you, there,

somewhere secret, somewhere

in the ancient backstreets of the brain

where pleasure and pain promiscuously

mix. Ordinary stone

turns to the time it’s made of,

each empty O a lens,

and why is there not nothing arcs,

its first full dolphin,

through the mind’s stunned air.

Long pause.        Well?

Then that depopulated silence.

That darker dark.