Even as we speak, our silences
begin to root themselves.
Blind little feelers,
they move with a sly persistence
till an unspoken word strikes water.
Or stone.
As for that leafy business in the sky,
that dazzle and jostle-
it’s harmless,
a benign friction that passes for speech
though public, and not their own:
the leaves repeat
only what the wind has told them.
Even as we speak, the roots
press their questions, reach
deeper into silence.
Each day they grow denser and more detailed
in their grasp of the dark.
- Chana Bloch
