A Dialogue

Whose voice, once silenced,

will reach this far again—
beyond any resonance of exit—
through the kingdom
of what-might-have-been
to an articulated constancy
no beast or angel can deny?

Craftsmen etch cold letters

into evanescent metals
or chisel deathless words
on stones too soon
turned to dust. Weighed
against the evidence of stars,
monuments are fleeting testimony.

God’s voice is hard to hear

when night’s intricate murmurs
cocoon our ears. The seed
for every sentence starts
in a dialogue with emptiness.
The roaring voids cascade
in set courses so even

at that pool of darkness

you willed you’d never visit
a whisper may yet penetrate
and lodge so deep inside
the unresurrected brain
you’d think you were commanded
to enunciate a name for

everything that’s missing

in your life. Whatever sound
your lips can shape
make sense to anyone,
who like you, is a single word away
from absence’s black center.
Speak so silence listens and is tamed.
Why would you come this far
if not to find yourself?
There are those whose voices
simply will not join your own—
eager enemies, indifferent friends—
sometimes it takes a stranger
to understand the way

a road can wend or how

the possible can open wide
like a steep path switching
back and forth to a height
above the trees from which vantage
the obscure grammar of daylight
makes the whole view legible.