Abruptly!

Right in the middle of a sentence
Abruptly the poet stopped talking!

Abruptly! Just like that!
With hand to ear
As if he could not hear
What was clear
To anybody near.
Friends he'd called them
Lovers, dear rubbish.
Whatsoever.

Abruptly!
The cupped hand
Fell from the dead ear
And in some fearful way
He was both gone and near!

Someone talking

I am the child within who remembers
and makes the mask of an old man weep.

I am the one who thought to come again.
I am the soul's small rain.

I am the dusty highway
that finds the ford and waits
to wash the wanderer's feet.

Between the mother's scream
and the child's first cry
I am the silence.

I am the one who leaves
all this
without pleasure
without pain.

Roy Ashwell