My Poems Are Like Whispers \ Out Of The Silence Stone Men Call Me Home

Alan: How can poetry flourish today?  It can shout along with the rest.  Or it can ask us to become that rare thing – quiet, attentive, open.

My Poems Are Like Whispers

My poems are like whispers

from the dying

or like a lover’s murmurs.

Do not talk loudly

if you wish to hear them.

Do not talk.

They are like a colloquy

of hidden selves;

they speak so softly

from the shadows, right

and left.

Be silent, O my soul;

incline your head gently

that your ear may fill

with the sound of the sea;

bend closer, my inheritors,

bend closer.

Nancy: The Stone Man, once standing in full view on ledge, is now hidden by spruces.  Words, however, still say “someone passed this way.”

Out Of The Silence Stone Men Call Me Home

Out Of The Silence

Before the City, there was a great

wide silence,

and day after day

no other men.  No one

to hail.  No open palm in greeting,

no signing of game.

If men passed

they left less sign than animals,

no scars

such as left by ice.  Wind

made a greater imprint

than the hunter alone

on the wide land.

No shadow

remained when the sun had gone,

when he had passed

into the silence.

Stone Men

The stone men come from those

long ago times

before the grandfathers were wise,

and there are no songs

holding the story.

No one

saw them born.

Yet the stone men cross the land,

breaking the silence

with their presence.  After

the hunter has gone,

the stone men cast a shadow over the land.

No longer

are we alone;

someone has passed this way.

Call Me Home

A stone man stands to the east,

speaking for the need of men to say:

I was here.

Day after day, his is the only break

in the silence.  No men

raise their hands in greeting.

This is the home I have chosen;

I have come here to give birth to words,

to poems.  They are like the stone men

across the beautiful wide land.

When my shadow has passed over

the bruised grass into silence, they

will call out: know this:

someone has passed this way.

“Out Of The Silence Stone Men Call Me Home” first appeared in East Of The Light (Stone Man Press & Slow Dancer Press, 1984).