;
Silences
I.
A dog sits silent. Her gaze shafts up
in study of her master’s face;
nostrils twitch and forelegs quiver –
she waits the crinkle of a smile,
the open hand that reaches down,
that turns her silence to a lick,
a roll against his shin, the thump
of tail and lap of tongue.
Flower-silence is more patient.
Their softness does not rattle in
the wind like leaves and pods. Acacias’
golden balls, callistemons’
red brushes, each a powdered show
of manly parts; and petals, if
they take your fancy, tutu-like
entice. Just add a touch of perfume:
nectar-moist they spread abroad
their message and await some action.
II.
Two people glare across a silence
hung between them as a frozen
curtain, a brittle shield that barely
blocks those flung eye-daggers
or shatters into screams or worse.
Or lovers sit: they stare ahead
with eyes averted; a silence grows
between them as a mountain feeding
on its growth. They are not skilled
to pierce that unquiet silence with
gentle hands and words that soothe,
yet speak their troubles. Massive the mountain
grows between them, its heights so steep
they daunt; wildered those lovers wander
to find no way round tangled slopes.
Long practised lovers, though, will sit
or lie hands linked, so easy in
their silence that not a word will stir
the air between them. At times, a thought
might rise in one and find its voice;
the other speaks; a simple squeeze
of hand replies. Silence settles
leaf-like. Forward such lovers live
through words and silences; they build
no mountains. They abide in quiet.
And quieter still are those who walk
minds fully in their walking, who sit
minds fully in their sitting. Their breath
grows slow and smooth, so slow it almost
is not there. Thoughts grow still;
they float away. Words cease; pictures
rise and hover, linger a while.
Mind lets them go and floats on nothing.
Breath ceases –
Breath resumes; mind watches
stillness cease and grows in wisdom.
;
;
Murray Alfredson, BA, Melbourne, MLib, Wales, is a former librarian, university lecturer and Buddhist chaplain. He lives on the Fleurieu Peninsula by Gulf St Vincent in South Australia. He took up writing after retirement, and has published essays on Buddhist meditation, inter-faith relations and poetics, and poems and translations in anthologies, magazines and e-zines in Australia, the USA, the UK, Sweden and Canada, and a collection, ‘Nectar and light’, in Friendly Street New poets, 12, Adelaide, 2007. His collection, The gleaming clouds, Interactive Publications, Brisbane, 2013, is available here and on Amazon here. He has won and been highly commended in several poetry awards, and been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.