Speaking for Themselves

to make component parts of place and consciousness

meaningless and, as breathing slows down,

to do what water does, announce a source in cadence,

repetition, sound, allow a gradual dissolving of

boundaries between the actual and evident and still,

when all that is done, I know there never was

a single place for me. I never lost enough to have one.

I want to live where they refused to speak --

those first emigrants who never said

where they came from, what they left behind.

Their country was a finger to the lips, a child's question stopped.

And yet behind their eyes in eerie silence, was an island,