Alone in a Silent Grove

Breath

of the muted voice, becoming quiet along the way, one

soft stream of air made softer still, by the occasion,

and then another,

such divisions are a journey shared, an abbreviation

of lifetimes,

as one becomes the other,

two companions choosing from those famous paths

we all remember, dirt roads that jolt and separate

by way of morning or the invitation of night.

In the grove,

one way

blends

into an opposite momentum,

in time, becoming every bit the stranger out of step with all companions,

wandering in the nearness of solitude and silence, as patient

as the years and hours of ordinary life,

but less familiar.

Disjoin path from path

amid the afternoon lines of brightness and fractured shadows,

and the silent grove becomes apparent, a few trees

suspended in light and the stillness

of breathing,

a few uncommon expressions of time.