Quiet

Not my words, but in my heart nonetheless.

The sky a deadbolt slid firmly

into place. The earth is lonely:

a dog barks its head off, trapped

in the slow afternoon. When he gives up

the silence is another lock on the door.

The heart pushes on us like a stone

no one can lift. We want so much

from this life but can only glimpse it.

We wander from room to echoing room, 

always only the surface of what we seek:

smoke rising through the floorboards, the faint

perfume of the earth burning, deep in the well of itself.

That something we have never seen affects us so completely:

We are the healed skin of its molten core.

Quiet by Sue Sinclair, in Breaker (Brick Books, London, Ontario 2008)

Photo is from the garden at the McNay Museum, San Antonio Texas.