Whispers

I’m not like the trains that run through town, blare their horns all the way
My train of thoughts can overtake me, and I don’t know what to say.
But since I held you for that moment in a lazy contra swing
I’ve felt a spirit lightly on my shoulder, and it gave me cause to sing
softly, even in the quiet hours, when sweet echoes of our conversation ring

We all learn our separate language, each year towers of Babel fall
We learn to talk on tiptoes, seas of strangers, we may never know at all.
Me with all my stumbling Spanish phrases, and sounds of howlers in the trees
Then you came with all your graces and our words painted pictures we could see,
and still, evening light plays on our photograph, embracing in a dream.

Your words give comfort in a violent world, through skies in sunset melodies
They whisper through the silences of garden soil where heartleaf ginger grows

Our paths trace deep within this land, down these stormy desert roads
Past crosstimbers, see the lights down in the valley, see how far we have to go...
Back at home, a contract on our wall, set down to guide us years ago
I read it when the ice-encrusted trees reflect the sunlight in the snow,
your words and your hands reach out in warmth, the glow of joy I’ve come to know…

We walk into the afternoons when all the ice has slipped away
Our whispers are in violet blooms, when woodcocks dance devotion to the moon…

In every language—brilliant mystery, words you speak, the way you move.
And in the silences between, our love speaks clearly as a train that’s passing through…

Copyright Tracy S. Feldman, All rights reserved