Poem: The Silence

Spoken Word Video and Text Below

The Silence

by John Biscello

My friend

who lives in the woods

told me there’s

a silence there

he’s never heard before.

Said

he’s lived in the woods

for nearly twenty years

and while he’s heard

plenty of quiet,

volumes and volumes

of quiet,

the silence

that he’s now hearing

is something new,

a rare species

announcing its presence

like a changed vocabulary of air.

Which made me wonder—

Has the famously golden silence

about which

many monks and mystics

have waxed poetic,

has that silence

begun its infectious creeping

to a next level of pervasiveness

and reign,

its singular voice

growing stronger and stronger

in vying for the claims

of our deeper attention?

Are we, the humans,

being forced via paradigm shift

into becoming less,

so much wonderfully less

than we thought we were

or voiced ourselves to be?

There was a writer,

a German one,

who called for

and prayed at the altar

of the god of slowness,

and I like to imagine

that this man’s god would,

in matching pace to tone,

speak softly, a silky pulsing hush

gentling its way into

the hearts of those who listened,

as if eavesdropping at the edge of a dream,

where memory pooled to silver,

in thrall to tenderest wake.

Originally from Brooklyn, NY, writer, poet, performer, and playwright, John Biscello, has lived in the high-desert grunge-wonderland of Taos, New Mexico since 2001. He is the author of four novels, Broken Land, a Brooklyn Tale, Raking the Dust, Nocturne Variations, and No Man’s Brooklyn; a collection of stories, Freeze Tag, two poetry collections, Arclight and Moonglow on Mercy Street; and a fable, The Jackdaw and the Doll, illustrated by Izumi Yokoyama.