Silence

[heslopian]

This is an exquisitely carved, serene, intelligent, deep and serious poem, spiked with wit in its extended metaphor, and one of the finest verses that I've ever read.

People always say that silence is golden-
As if it were some sort of ore.

Could you see us mining it?
Tractors hauling earth by town libraries,
The rhythm of jackhammers about forests,
Astronauts, swinging their picks on Mars
In search of the scared metal. "Scared metal"? That doesn't sound right to me. Did you mean "sacred"?
And who knows-
I might find some nuggets myself.
Even now I see the fly, dead, on my windowsill
Keeping a pebble between his wings. I love this couplet. The line break is perfectly place, the image unique yet familiar, profoundly and quietly disturbing.

We’d wear rings and bracelets of silence, too.
A blacksmith would whisper over a bar
And watch the melting liquid drip into a circle
Etched in stone, fit for a woman’s finger.

Which means, we would propose with silence.
I’d pay all of my savings, and present you
With the stillness of an Alaskan mountain
Crowned by the hush of birch branches. Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. Like an elegant pastoral tinged with stranger undertones.