imagine a woodsman swinging an ax in the distance the tree speaking out of sync then nothing except what is left in your eye chips still fly but your ears dumb fleshy things hang from your head useless handles frozen stiff the world around you fills with dead air the quiet thickens till the atmosphere is packed solid surrounding you like clear wax and every one there rides in a limousine stars of the silent screen seen through shatterproof glass the faces glide past lips moving like goldfish the trumpet has lost its voice the seashell — mute as a dish my god in a place like this what do you do with a word like inconceivable? spell it she said hands moving behind the question in a kind of semaphore and you talk too fast later that evening the poems fell from my mouth little naked birds crying for life and who would have known they were there had she not taken them into her care holding them up till they could fly on their own and back where this began the tree came crashing down and the sound was the sound of the deaf applauding

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