If With Merely Human Hopes

by John Spaulding

If with merely human hopes we live
under the sleep that keeps us from the dark
and if we can’t foresee the endless wind
that sniffs around our empty shell displayed
for us across a numb divide and if
we stand and look and see it all or grasp
our friends our lives or just a thought and say
we never felt alone or less distressed,
it is because we reconcile to ever-
constant loss.  Just as today I thought
the sound we make at first is always crying,
but then I thought we must be still again
to hear the silence of our lives begin–
before the silence of our lives begins.

• Read “Harmonious Earth” by John Spaulding.
• For more poems, click here.