In winter, in the woods:
it’s just me talking in my head.
I’m the noisy one among these pines.
And then a blackbird, with its charcoal eye,
burns through silence,
lifts a little song into the air.
Soft woods scrape.
I hear the shuffle of loose limbs,
the whiffing snow.
A breeze begins.
Begins and ends with nothing in-between
its bitter huffs.
I move along the ground,
through wiry brush, picking my way,
talking my way
through quiet stretches, word
by word, building a path
toward an opening, where I might say
some things that matter,
fill a silence that insists
in sounding like itself and nothing more.
But saying isn’t said.
A listening air around me rises
as I lend an ear.