These Silent Days

 

These Silent Days

These silent days can be interrupted
by
a woodpecker rehearsing for the Spring.
And then, more often,
they are punctuated with sobs from the
hollow of distant grief and aches.
Life can turn cruel without our knowing,
a decade passes and chop block houses line
the field where mustard and poppies once grew.
Life can be sweetened for an hour,
a meal, a hug, a dog nuzzling at your elbow.
The air is heavier
the fewer people in the room.
Half a day later and the dishes are cleared,
loneliness creeps in uninvited
but is so familiar you put out a chair for him.
And though the buzz of life once flew like geese,
like bees,
the silence now hangs over the hours.
Before, now, and after, it is the way it always
has been.