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Who Says the Ear Loves Silence

After Patrick Rosal

Doesn’t the ear love the jangling
keys, the lock clicked open,
the beloved coming
home, and the coming
too, the oh, God!
Doesn’t it love, love,
crave that voice. The ear—
after all—begs to dance
a malleus, incus, stapes tango
with air. The ear loves
the peculiar whoosh
of wind and thunder’s holler
jangling bones caught mid-sleep
in a rocking chair. The ear
loves the knock of rain
in a drainpipe, the singing saw’s
threnody in a tiled tunnel,
the all-brass band. But
the ear worries
about what it can’t
hear: the traveling husband
flying, driving, eating, teaching
and in his chest
a ticking bomb.

Marie-Elizabeth Mali

Originally published in Poet Lore, Spring 2011