Silence-Management

How do you shape your silences?
What do they serve? Some
silences seem to preside
over thoughts that keep going,
keep searching for nothing
except the next object of thought.

There's the quiet in the mind
following failure, the sound
of shame and acquiescence.

Yesterday you heard a noise
that came you thought from
inside a wall. You found a silence
and leaned into it, hoping/not hoping
to hear the sound a second time.
The next day you remembered
it as a silence to savor, not as
an absence of something you sought.


hans ostrom 2019

Stingrays

Small stingrays propel floating
as if they were broad flesh-leaves
rising from secret forests on the sea
floor. How can their skin be so softly
liquid to the touch? How can the edges
of their bodies undulate and curl so subtly?
The rays move like intuitive insight
through the mind of the water. They
are a marvelous surmise.


hans ostrom 2017