Silence Suivant

Days spent without the dumb certainty of language
The reprieve found in stepping on rock after rock
Moving amongst the evidence of
trees and living things running somewhere
Wild pigs have foraged here

Such are the clear moments of smallness
Snags of blackberry thorns on a long slow hike
The impossibility of drawing a deep breath
in an abandoned mineshaft
Not even the wind finds us here
Undersides of relics stubbornly static
and what collects there
Distillations of surfaces
Channelled into the depths
where we see with our hands

We inherit this;
Vast underbellies of others’ understandings
Clouded thoughts in small crowded houses
Tiny tables shortened by too much Pastis
Closer
Closer until everything touches
Forces the air out
We leave too
the cramped room
the tiny village
the road
Further

Inadequate maps without spaces
show nothing
Give nothing
Cartographers of places untouched by the sun
Hold maps in their memory to draw later
I watch where you place your foot
I follow
Today the curl of hair on your collar
and your square back
Sure footed on an ancient trail reclaimed by green
Following ghosts of Romans
and English tourists
Cradled in the valley we walk long in silence

The clarity of a river full of fish
Sudden leap of a toad
First blossoms brave the freezing air
against a forest of brilliant green regrowth
I watch our shadows pass over the water
birdcall anouncements precede us

Stories speak more loudly here
Voices move
years after the sound has left them
We breathe them in
Silence expands
falls softly into the river and the soil
crackles under our feet
then scatters