A SILENT SCREAM

A SILENT SCREAM

There is stillness /only when we drop to the ground, /pulling our legs in beneath us/like fingers clasping a palm /in order to become a fist. ---From “Light Year” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 08-24-11

It is the one place we learn too soon perhaps

to find that still point, early enough to know

stillness is easily within our grasp: grovelling. 

East of Eden, could there have been any other

way to accept an edict of eviction? Hind legs

are the postulant’s crutch to stand tall again. 

Was not the burning bush accepted in terror,

in quite the same suppliant surrender to rules

enslaved people must learn to struggle by? 

Even a troth to die for a sovereign is still taken

on knees propped by legs beneath, like fingers

clasping a palm. Where lies the stillness there? 

Did not the jubilant brave receive his infant

hunter on warm buckskin in the same position

as the homeless tramp accepting a tossed coin? 

In wars waged for God and Country, a bereaved

wife, mother, father, or son are the orphaned

who -- kneeling -- must accept a hero’s carrion. 

Where is the still point there? Does the lover

still offer his promise and fealty to his beloved

in that humbled, prayerful, drop to the ground? 

One scours this place overcome by great wrath

descending from the skies, the oceans, the air,

fire below and fire above, fathers killing sons. 

A buried miner scrounging through the bowels

of the earth for fossil to light cities and lift

warplanes off the ground, does he not crouch? 

Is there any other manner, a decent mien,

to receive these wages of rebellion, a paradise

lost, not with legs curled beneath like fingers 

clasping a palm to clench a fist against the sky?

Where is the stillness there? In a stilled anger,

deep in his heart where feelings are the hardest? 

---Albert B. Casuga

08-26-11 

Prompt: Is it age /that prods what we /want forward, offering /it as easily as small /talk. Is there any need /to mention the clouds /or cloudlessness when /we can speak about death /and love with strangers. /... Feelings are /the hardest part...--- From “Old Fashioned” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 08-23-11