The Perseids

Shards of interstellar flak,
some smaller than a human eyeball.
Too many shooting stars to wish on.
Soon the moon will rise to smudge
their tracks, then day will break
to end the game. How many streak
above our sleep, unheeded? I’ll check
my dreams for traces – sudden flashes
when an eyeball vanished
in the radiance of its own seeing.

The Rest Is Silence

It’s not the wind that cries
nor trees when they are ripped at by the wind,
but only the tree that’s slow to bend.
Sorrows are not what happens,
but what holds against what happens.
Speech is the resistance
of the larynx to the body’s wind.
Words are the forts we build
to keep the rawness of the world at bay.
The rest is silence.