Ode to Silence

Megan Sexton

Glory to the half rest, to the breath between

the third and fourth beats,

the dwindling arrow of the decrescendo,

to the sunrise over Malibu, and its sleeping starlets,

the empty horizon,

the city's great thought still looming,

to parked cars, the cold engine seconds before ignition

dreaming of the road

unwound and endless,

to the lull before ecstasy, the saint's vigil

of the dark soul in suffering,

the grip of the heart before release,

to the inaction of love before the reaction,

of the hand before it reaches out,

its sharp twitch of self-consciousness,

to the embryo, the soft dream of the womb,

the golden truth of genesis,

the sustained hush and its amplitude.