J. B. Phones Me at the End of Summer, Asking Where
I Find Silence in the Lehigh Valley

Let it be Sunday, pre-dawn.
Let the snow that began
Saturday afternoon
when the dark came on
keep falling, and let it be blown
soundlessly. Let it be frozen
January and the moon
new below the horizon.
Let the sky depend from iron
hinges, the land decline
from forest to formless plain,
the slowfall sift and dune
in the windscoured open.
Let the ground mole batten
on blackness in its own den,
every internal combustion engine
go cold as glaciated stone.

Let the mind be Norwegian,
die-cast, the ear attune
itself to the one bird alone
abroad before the thin sun
fissions, windspan-borne
on the liquid nitrogen
morning air. Let him darken
a dropline drawn from Orion
over South mountain,
down toward the drifted lawn.
Let him turn, his float-plane
flattening overhead. Listen:
a sudden motion-plosion
under wing, brief backspin
of aftertone, then intimation
of the non- below the baseline,
then the grey-green zone
of gone

copyright 2003 Steve Myers