The Faith of Falling
       

An interior space opens on a sudden whisper
altered relation to sound, and in the twilight
measures of palpable air, like a soundproofed room

where a lady plays an etude from Chopin
and liquid keys of the piano fall
like the clarity of running water down rocks

each note is discrete, bounded by emptiness
or silence is what the note requires to be heard
bending still like a circle white upon a white page

the words when spoken concertedly hesitate
and follow the mental touch of their utterance
they occur once as gesture and a second time

as a sound that the barometer feels, a disturbance
of underground waters in the most gentle fall
of pressure on something aware, if also tentative.

Copyright © 2010 Mark McMorris All rights reserved
from Entrepôt
Coffee House Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission