Quiet

Sorry, another poem

Photo by Karim Sakhibgareev on Unsplash

*This original post contained a formatting issue (Substack doesn’t have any non-frustrating poetry formatting options). Apologies if you had to read this as one big block of bold text.

Quiet

Where can I go to find quiet?
Pure quiet. Simmering soundlessness.
For solitude scarcely exists 
in the places we have made.

The gnarly noise of the world takes aim:
AC whooshing, fridge humming 
its melody of monotony,
highway perfecting its roar in the distance 
like thousands of airplanes whispering off the runway.
The commode flushes; 
I chuckle at the metaphor and

think about the loveliness of birds singing at dawn,
the life they are emblematic of, 
how they beckon the arrival
and therefore the hope
of a new day,
and I feel guilty 
that some mornings 
I just want them to be
quiet. 

There are times I need to be saved
by the ceaseless silence.
I am desperate for it like caffeine.
Desperate for the tree in the forest to make
no sound when it falls, even though
I’m standing beside it, watching it
tumble like thunder.

I know this coveting of quiet
is a selfish desire.
But desperate and selfish can be 
and often are
of a kind. 
My self-centeredness
is at least self-aware.

I want to be the stream in the middle of
nowhere that is really 
everywhere wide open,
the water my heart, the rocks my body,
the soft, trickling sound of its flow my mind.

I welcome that gentle murmur of movement
ever-moving, ever-clear, ever-constant, 
the only sound the stream 
ever needs to make.

And so I desire not a place devoid of sound but 
a place where sound does not divide and multiply
itself into noise.
I desire not pure quiet
but pastoral solitude. 
I desire the sounds of places 
we have not made.

Oh, to hear the sound of
my own voice in
my own head.
Oh, to listen to it!
—say
Slow down and
Look around and
Do not fear bold moves.

My life, like everyone’s,
flows in one direction: forward,
ahead, 
alive 
like the 
steady, trickling water and the singing birds 
until my arrow, like everyone’s, 
turns into a
flat line.

I fall into the singing stream, hoping
its wet pulse beats me back to life,
hoping its quiet murmur carries me away
from the jumbled math of the world and
on ahead into what I cannot see
but know is there.