Poem: 'A Whispering Silence'

 

A WHISPERING SILENCE 

(Chalkidiki September 2006) 

arriving 

somewhere… 

but not here 

Poseidon’s green trident 

of peninsula’s thrust in 

bird-scattered Aegean, 

a vibrant cluster 

of villages set beneath 

the forested hills, with 

black scorched-earth scars 

wreaked by summer flame 

only the turtles survive, 

sculling safe beneath 

the deep-water surface 

of their hidden lake 

life grows progressively 

stranger, the longer I’m here, 

a deepening need to firm 

onto structures, as you 

change my world by leaving it 

there’s fossil-life beneath 

the surface of stone, 

yet for all associations 

with timelessness 

this place is ghosted 

with impermanence, 

old silences beneath 

deep-water surfaces 

your absence 

demands reorientation, 

a repositioning in 

altered topography 

I can’t escape 

sensing body-warmth 

in the touch of sun, 

your breath in the silent 

scars of old arguments, 

with words as events enough 

in themselves to define 

things that fray, but 

never quite separate, 

things that words are 

never equal to, until 

I can write poems to 

prove they are… 

in the slow drawing-in 

of dreams we share your 

wait for anticipated 

menstrual flow, as 

you arrive somewhere… 

but not here 

there’s no place 

like alone

 

Published in: 

‘PURPLE PATCH no.116’ 

(UK – February 2007) 

Featured online at: 

‘GYPSY ART SHOW’ 

(24 April 2019)