#338

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In 1167, when the west doorway of Nun’s Church was completed, no one alive now was alive then. That was eight hundred years ago, so of course. Those who came later, who came to speak, “In a happy proto-silence they or we all waited.” Eventually, they showed, and they embarked, like us too, on this amazing “adventure of sin,” all speaking at once.

In Proto-silence

That stunned afterpause over damp sheets

when you blow to cool the sweat from your lover’s throat

and she places your hand on her soft hot belly

like when you’re in the front seat of a roller coaster

and you crest the hump, yearning for a second, held

by the string of cars unseen behind you

like when you touched a match to a fuse, and you can’t see

the spark inside the slow string of fire, then a pop

sends a Chinese projectile ballistic into the July night.

A bombardier calls “bombs away” into his radio

the Flying Fortress bucking like a relieved horse, its droppings

arcing toward the ball bearing factory cringing below.

You silence the phone. Lock the door. Comb your hair.

Take a drink. Pee. The cat is sleeping and the dishwasher

hums and sloshes. You’ve swallowed the pill.

The curtain is about to rise, the stage hands

whispering in their headphones, sandbags hanging heavy

on the taught ropes, the pulleys about to squeak.

The nurse calls out centimeters. “This may take awhile.”

You bathe your lover’s forehead, belly no longer soft.

Fetch her ice chips. Doze. The innocent monitors blink.

For the moment, it’s still still, a quiet eternity away

before that explosion that will come, life full-throating,

crying the adventure of sin. Time's forever equipoise...

KZ