THE SANCTITY OF SILENCE

I must confess.
I talk to memories
and animals
and faded pictures
of memories
and animals.

I also profess
that I am relieved
that my conversations
are not protracted
and are one-sided only.

I don't hear voices,
unless it is the sound
of my own voice,
which is music to me
when the sound
of silence
mimics the ubiquitous ache
of a small pebble
in my shoe.

I don't feel unbalanced
because I initiate
the exchange.
It is not as if
I have an alien device
welded to my ear
that decrees,
by a Pavlovian frequency,
that I salivate
on demand
to something other
than my own cuisine.

I don't have a beeper
or a beeper
that beeps my beeper,
nor a phone
that phones my phone
or induces withdrawals
when we are estranged.

I am not
goose-bumped
to orgasm
by titillating sounds
from anything
that can't
share a good
bottle of wine
with me.

I only raise
the intensity
of my voice,
Pavarotti style,
in the shower,
never in a church
or a confessional,
or a train
or a plane.

Never in a restaurant
or a funeral home,
a bank
or a movie theatre,
or in a supermarket
to phone home
to discuss food groups
or preferences.

If I am important,
I am important
with or without
my phone.
In fact,
I was important
before I met
my phone,
at least
to my baby.

She loved me
even when I whispered
or had nothing to say.
She would love me now,
despite my idiosyncratic
transgressions.

Love,
like life,
seems to grow best
when it slows down
to a trickle,
like reluctant droplets
of honey
cascading from a spoon.

Only then
can one enjoy
the perfection
of unvarnished stillness
and the sanctity
of silence.

© JOHN PISCATELLA