Because my son is doing a lovely job of pracising Debussy's Suite Bergamasque on the piano as I type this, I found Judy's poem "Silence" reprinted from Poetry Macao (there's more at the site if one poem isn't enough) a particularly pertinent and moving piece for this week's poetry monday. This is a tranformative poem, as many of Judy's poems are, converting a moment of sensation into an expansive inflation of meaning. Enjoy.
Silence
All weekend I’ve listened
to a piano competition on the radio.
The contestants each play
the same piece until the small
velvet hammers at the base
of my neck are struck
before the notes emerge.
The commentator explains
how much exists in the silence
between strikes.
The judges’ decision
often based on these pauses
of possibility.
That space of becoming
reminds me of the child’s foot
in Neruda’s poem,
not knowing its purpose.
Like hands at a piano
before they swoop
uncertain if they’ve been given
the span of a bird’s wing
in order to fly, or merely harvest
in their low-level sweeping
the miraculous seeds
of quaver and semi-quaver.
Or the heart unaware
it’s moored to the body
before the rope of the pulse
at the wrist pulls tight.
Or the ear
in the midst of silence,
wondering if it’s an ear
or instead the invisible
music in a far off transparency
of orchard and sky,
wondering if it’s been buried
in the flesh and bone
of the head
simply to bear
all future transmissions.
Or so that one day
it might become
a bird. Or an apple.
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