Sutra

To
describe
silence with
sound is an
irony profound:
words
are
filaments.

Better: with emptied
chest, closed
mouth.
Head and
hands cupped -
night branches for
lambent birds
to
rest
upon.

Almost all my poems have jokes in them. There are two here: both are the obvi­ous rhyme in the first stan­za, a sort of empha­sis to the read­er that they are lis­ten­ing to sound and not silence, and an acknowl­edge­ment on my part that my attempt is fun­da­men­tal­ly ridicu­lous. After read­ing this aloud, how­ev­er, I pause for 10 sec­onds or so, and I’ll glare at any­one who makes a sound.