A Palpable Silence

In honor of the hardworking construction crew outside my window, and their hammers and nail guns, their buzzing machinery, their undeniable love of classic rock, and the jokes and stories they tell above the hum of it all.

In honor of the silence that comes at quittin’ time:

A Palpable Silence

What is as delightful
as a palpable silence,
a creamy latex of a
silence, stirrable
with a long stick.  Such
a silence is particularly
thick at the bottom, a
very smooth lotion, like
good paint by the gallon.
This is a base silence,
colored only by addition,
say a small squeeze of
green when the bird sings
idly of trees he has
seen.  It is a clean
silence, the kind that
does not divide us,
like dreams it is
viscous but like good dreams
where sweet things last and
last past credibility.
Even in the dream we know
it is a luxury.

- Kay Ryan, from Strangely Marked Metal (1985)