Silence

The poetic kind, fastened inside Greek light

and summer and birds brought to someone’s

attention. The kind that’s fastened

inside an avocado, so buttery it’s hard to know

you’ve eaten it unless you use lemon

or salt. The feathery kind inside snow,

that doesn’t exist until you shovel it.

Note: silence can’t wake up without you.

Specific cells, having gotten lost in a fervor

of their own, God help me, rallied silently into

the garrisons of the lymph nodes. It was early

November, yes, that was the phone call.

Another kind of silence happens when the baldness

shows under the cap. As if the biggest thing

in the universe has been found. Oh! It really has!

So big scientists say it shouldn’t exist. Clusters

of quasars four billion light-years across. Each

pure energy surrounding a huge galaxy

with a super-massive black hole at its center.

Nearly everything is a surprise at first,

and unknown at the core. Needles, tests. Then just

what it is: silence opening its dark eye, pointing.