Songs without Words
1
I sat near the top of the house, where it got so very
warm, on the landing between the bathroom and the child’s
bedroom, with its door ajar. I could hear the little rustling
sounds of the night’s song filtering through to us, like white noise,
accompanied by the hissing in the pipes, and I counted her
even breaths in the summer night. We breathed out,
somewhere in the air the circles of breath ran together.
In the silence, the day loosened its grip. She had quietened down.
I stayed sitting there, listening, sensing fluctuations
beyond my reach; searching for signs in the pale
northern sky. Soon the songs of the birds would drown us out
as we drifted into the first light of day.
OSIRIS 95, 2022
Osiris Poetry 