Graduating to Wet Stones

The Wings of the Listener Once, in June, when the Day Lilies were yet half the day from too late, you said you heard wings battering inside me, something trying to fly out and I was disagreeable but attentive, the uneasy listener. I was your singular public-- your petite audience. But it was you clapping, it was you pecking at the knots and snarls, you with your twenty tongues and wings beating, ferocious, beating, beating your way through and out of me. Since then you are the silent one, with your thousand miles to fly out of my head. And I've been silent too, always in my non silent ways. I had a strange dream that I heard your voice, tongues, wings and how you wanted them to belong solely to you. And I, miles away could do nothing. The wings of the listener, if I spoke, would crush the bird inside your heart, where he nests, bites, flaps, sings. I want him to fly, burst like a star from your mouth, fly back to me re-enter and reclaim me. I guard our silence like those Day Lilies, useless in their yellow costumes, swirling on their stems. A listener should be on guard but never too sure of herself. And the bird - who knows where he might fly?

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