Contemplating Quiet
Quiet
Does not necessarily mean
Placid.
Take the sea, for instance:
Its surface can be as still
As silence,
Hardly a ripple, seemingly untouched.
But turn the tides
Once, and you’ve got yourself a storm
So frothy
And tempestuous
And blue-black
And bruised
And bubbly
That you can’t even tell
Where the sea ends
And the sky begins.
L. E. S.
If I am glass,
Let me shatter all the windows
To myself, smash every porthole
In my veins, demolish the
Reflections you think you know,
Until I’m
Dancing in broken shards
That only I understand.
If I am glass,
Go ahead and break me,
Push me off the shelf —
I dare you.
For the moment I shatter,
You’ll see the pieces on the floor
Collect, flicker dark,
Glow blood orange on the edges,
Tornado up into constellations
Fireworks, bruised ecstasies —
You’ll see me explode
Back Into life,
A Phoenix you mistook
For a canary
In a coal mine.
Ornithology
I have wings like Silver and
Cinnamon, layered with
Dove gray and swatches of
Scarlet paint.
When I fly, my short feathers
Look like a blur of snow
Behind a brown cloud, and the red
Cuts the air like a flame
Kindling the Distance.
I know my own wings:
They are mine, and I am theirs,
We are each other,
And we are ourselves.
Every beat of my heart is
A beating of my wings.
The top of my head is
Dusty brown, and you can usually
Tell it’s me by the tousled
Feathers there,
Or by the shock of delicate white
Right by the neck.
I sing timidly, but you can hear me
When I’m on my own, if you hide behind a
Tree or lamp post — it’s a three note tune,
Short short long, short short long —
One, two, three — one, two, three —
Light and mellow, like wind
On glass, or a pebble hitting the carpet.
You can find me on the tops of pines,
Usually, or up in overcast skies
Or where the snow lies still and soft
In places no one goes.
I know my own wings:
They are mine, and I am theirs,
We are each other,
And we are ourselves.
Every beat of my heart is
A beating of my wings.