I listen to voiceless quiet
that presses on my ear,
a sanctity of silence resonant
with pondering. Perhaps
one learns to crave such lonely
spaces where the mind
stretches like a lazy cat.

There must be a skill to it –
fitting time over these forsaken
hollows, pulling it tight as drum
skin over this booming absence.

I listen to the walls, hoping
to hear the echo of raucous family
tables, the clatter of toddlers
racing imaginary cars.

Mirrors hold not even shadows
of lovers who must have stood here
admiring each other in the glass.

Silence walks the stairs at night
muffled like the footfall of someone
loved coming late, hesitantly
toward the bedroom. I open
the door to darkness in the hall.

Seeing a white fan hovering,
friendly ghost stirring air
above my bed

long feathers of wood grain
on my dresser, grandchildren
smiling from their frames

my rocking chair, my name in brass,
resting before a shoji screen,
its folds tempering sunlight

green comforter a shapeless
mound across my thigh,
pillows in a scattered fleet.

It all comes back, mosquitoes
singing at the windows, hungry
dog nuzzling my toe.

I lose it in the dark down distant
passages of dreams. Miraculous,
how life always gives it back.

I walk into the incipient darkness,
light still clinging to blue hammocks
of sky stretched between buildings.
Sprinkles of window glow dot
the black anonymity of glass facades.
Down the street the walking man
appears and vanishes below traffic lights.
A car passes, gears singing in vibrato.

My heels click, the sole footsteps
on this sidewalk. Steam still rising
from asphalt baked under summer sun –
I feel its tiny ripples snake up my legs.
Paltry air hardly stirs leaves
on spindly trees caught in cement buckets.
Forcing in the heavy vapor, my lungs
struggle to sieve oxygen.

The hour hangs heavy with memory –
hill country Texas – stunted oaks
thrusting spiked twigs into a yellow moon.
Spider webs shimmering like torn silk
draping woodland paths. The Guadalupe
River humming constant pedal point
to the saw-songs of cicadas. Somewhere
in my archeological past my childhood
echoes in the museum of recollection.

Somewhere in the jumbled shadowbox
of twilights I peer out on ghost-white
lawns of snow, hearing knife-edged
winds stirring playground swings,
feeling cold seep through layered wool.
Or a speck upon the infinite face of waters,
I stand at a ship’s rail counting
first stars, not knowing which to wish on.

Another turn of time’s kaleidoscope,
and with ten shakes of a rusty cow bell
I call my children in, Listen to them
shouting their farewells to friends,
to games incomplete, surrendering
to failing light, their own tired bodies.

Here on this lonely street the same awkward
time – too early to go home to bed,
too late to work, eyes tired, back weary.
It hangs impending between night and day,
a blank page in the diary of the universe.

A film showing acrobatic bodies
tangled like tarantulas embracing
doesn’t twitch a hormone.

Black lace bra and panties mounted
tightly on a mannequin – a study
in prickle and itch.

Lust, boredom may lure some
when love fails or time numbs
the fantasy of coupling.

For others, a place about loss –
singles trying to fill an absence,
widows soothing grief of memory.

For many, one more gadget, some new
technique to avoid romance,
flesh to flesh commitment.

A little shop of hope for people hungry
to take life, wring it dry, determined
there is something more to be.