Noisome Silence

The silence chatters knowingly of words

unsaid—better that way—so rancor molds

into the blackened crust that solitudes

parallel lines in mathematical precision.

Cleanly, numbers waltz in dire solemnity,

calculate the morning of your algorithm,

stripping mystery from destiny’s illusion.

You’d change your numbers like your socks

to twist the sun around the earth—the counter-

revolution of Copernicus, yourself the navel

of the world chanting, “What a piece of work…”

to stone-stopped ears, statutes against deafening

sounds that clatter the cluttering of the silence

once cherished as the cherries plucked ripe

from swollen trees of distant promises.

Laying Future

The rabbit laid her nest’s foundation

in the place the dog takes his morning roll,

twisting on his back and kicking up a canine prayer,

offering his vulnerable belly to his Alpha god.

The rabbit’s kits, if ever born, would prove

the dog’s snack, quickly gulped and gone.

The mother never knew the ground she sought

was tainted with the dog born with canine

teeth and lives their rule. He can’t help it,

nor can she in the desire to lay her future.

You live between the rabbit and the dog,

laying future’s foundation in another's yard,

instinct acting on the next minute’s breath,

next beat of the heart, next impulse to craft

a vulnerable prayer that your kits may live

unharmed in the roll of morning’s call.

Beyond Destiny

Yesterday closed its box with thudding dullness

that escaped the ears of another room; ears

caught the tumult of tomorrow, not knowing

the still-born traits of repetition—same old,

same old, the aged like to say, squawking out

memories of new-found wisdom, astounded

over the prophetic voice clutching throats

in the final clasping expressed before the second

day has passed away, the trail of grave clothes.

How we’d relive those shuttering days, so we say,

voicing lies the ancestors spoke when they

passed on mistakes for us to catch in pools

opened by the mutant twist of destiny

bearing the plan of God that lies a finger’s

width away from touch—a foretaste

of Zeno’s arrow that never hits the mark.

The eternal “almost” thuds tomorrow.