Listening

The radio speaks in the next room.

Names repeat themselves
until they become sounds only,
like stones rolling in a river.

The announcer calls this information.

But information is not harmless.
Some facts pass through us quietly.
Others enter the body
and remain there.

Afternoon light falls across the table.

I notice it has already begun
to lose its strength.

There are things the voice on the radio
cannot know.

That memory is not a record
but a climate.

A word spoken at the right moment
changes the air.

Breathing becomes difficult.

The commentators raise their voices.
They demand attention.

They speak of justice, endurance,
of the necessity of witnessing.

It is easy to speak this way
when the past did not occur inside you.

For them the past is argument.

For others
it is weather.

I turn the dial.

The room grows quiet again.

A cup of tea cools slowly.
The clock resumes its patient counting.

These small things
are not an escape.

They are instructions.

I have lived long enough
to see what power does
once it realizes no one can stop it.

I do not need the lesson repeated.

What I need now
is the work of remaining.

The world will continue explaining itself
in the language of urgency.

Let it.

There is another task.

To guard the interior rooms.

To know which doors must stay closed
so the house does not collapse inward.

Silence is sometimes necessary.

Not forgetting.

But care.

To step back from the fire
without denying the fire exists.

To keep, if possible,
a little warmth.