Speak, Silence

There is no way to say I cannot speak:
the very abnegation self-negates.
Words tangle, tumbled down like wooden gates
rotting on hinges too stiff to even creak
as gusts tug through the homestead above the creek,
abandoned like the stone walls to their fates
of silence and decay and endless waits
for one more beam to break down late next week.
Yet silence, golden or consenting, will
perpetuate its cause; hushes stay hushed,
hard to hack through. Blocked off from the south,
the empty house is overgrown with brush
that blooms in spring and glories autumn still:
a way of happening, an empty mouth.

—7 March 2009

Yes, I can sometimes write things with more than 31 syllables. For your amusement, here are two outtakes from before I realized this sonnet needed to stay focused on a single image instead of jumping about progressing:

A silence can be empty: down the hall
a lounge is grieving; those who get away
find that linoleum cannot console, that all
fluorescent bulbs can do is buzz decay.

A silence can heard, the still small voice
surpassing all things: listen, and rejoice.

I hope to use these in something else some day. Especially that first, as the second is bit heavy-handed.

---L.