Many feathers. In the silence of many feathers. - Robert Bly Today my window spoke to me in the language of leaves, told me of gravity and the tired hands of twilight day after day pulling at the trees’ thousand fingers, the trees with their lifetime of cycles, the wind, its invisible wings. I have seen things only words will outlive , it said. But even words kneel before the silence of feathers. Once a poet peered inside the hollow of a tree and discovered words, and now I steal from him, repeat his curved consonants, the illusion of presence. In the secret, dim light I run my hands over the carcass of some dead creature he might have seen still heaving its last sighs. A window knows nothing of the sorrows of speech, the weight of things breaking as wind carries them away from tongue. Darkness moves against darkness, night dresses its sleepy body in shadows, whispers its stories, and my window speaks what it sees. While I see only what is spoken: A poet peers inside a tree and sees ca...
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