Silence Heard Twice, from Bare Ruined Choirs

"Silence Heard Twice" was written many years ago. I am posting it today because October 10 was the birthday of my first wife, Barbara Jean Kepler (1946-2003).


Silence Heard Twice


You say that the hermit in me enjoys
being left to these times of solitude,
to these times of echoes,

to be stripped clean of sound and abandoned.
This afternoon I abandoned myself
to truths to be traced

in the hardwood. Light fell in patterned,
lambent beams on the tongue-and-groove oak floor.
Where the fiber of light

and wood merged, I placed my hands to the warmth,
to the warm-grained clarity of silence,
to the coming and going

of my living, to my heartbeat’s heartwood
and its glad echo of inspiration.
And now I say

silence is always heard twice: silence mute
with memory at your leaving; memories rich
in silence at your return.

Copyright 2009 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved