July 26, 2005
Silence
the garden fountain Crescent Hotel Eureka Springs AR
Silence
Sometimes we don't say anything.
Sometimes we sit on the deck
and stare at the masses of goldenrod
where the garden used to be
and watch the color change
from day to day,
the high yellow turning
to mustard and at last
to tarnish.
Starlings flitter
in the branches
of the dead hornbeam
by the fence.
And are these,therefore
the procedures of defeat?
Why am I
saying all this
to you anyway
since you already know it?
But of course
we always tell
each other
what we already know.
What else?
It's the way love is
in a late stage of the world.
"Silence" by Hayden Carruth, from Collected Shorter Poems ©. Copper Canyon Press.
