The Silence

It was first in battle
that I heard it;
the moment before the sword
meets the opponent’s swung blade
and your life
courses and flees,
both a cresting wave
and the scuttling crab beneath.

Then I re-found it
when becalmed on the ocean,
the sky above blue as breath
squeezed to the last effort,
the sun a dancer
frozen
and then in frantic movement
and we thirty or so
stood…sat…stretched…
and waited
for something to give;
most believing it would be the heart within —
it was then I heard it again.

And when — many years later
after I found my way home
and lay nestled beside Penelope
and yet
outside the window I smelled
that treacherous ocean
and felt the tug — I heard it
again; the silence that belongs
to the ground and yet is found
wherever there is blood
still moving around.