silence
the silence is thick and loud
it drips down trees,
it fills canyons,
it stops up holes in
punched train tickets,
it’s a thin film over the night,
and it locks us into a snapshot with
the stamp of
a camera flash
andover there in the corner
a man sits down at the piano,
he fixes all of it,
he puts the keys in the right order,
the notes crawl over each other
like strange insects
and your smile lands on topyour laugh breaks
the silence