SILENCED THINGS
I never hear raindrops slow when they thin and scatter,
when the weight of each one lightens, even as they’re still falling.
I never hear a jetliner moving toward the horizon, the sound of it
blending with sunlight as I see it fade into the haze
or hear the footsteps of cardinals scurrying across a concrete walkway—
only that I tried as hard as I could, like a silent heart
on that forgetful day in yet another year since everything passed on
and silence silenced things, forever
vacated from my ears, forever rotating in and out of consciousness,
rotating thinner across the depths of air
where their sounds stay barely witnessed.
PORTENTS
There are moments suddenly interrupted: an apparition
appearing as an actor centred on stage
and then a spotlight is switched on
when the familiar lighting reveals a texture I can feel
though cannot hold. But just as suddenly, it leaves.
When it happens, it’s the finer aromas that still go missing.
But I see everything soon leaves, and what I recall—
even if I’m not conscious of it—is all I have left. Isn’t this
the entire story? I am here with random memory switched on and off
in this maddening ritual I don’t control. But what I see
is how brutal the lighting can be, a ceremonial illumination
of a face and hands through every version of my life,
a historic river running over the washed stones of the riverbed, the sand
smoothed and flattened without aged footprints, and me again waiting
with my hold on it looser than ever. Not a moment leaves
without my breathlessness in it, the sounds of what we knew,
the only way we can be with each other—as if we share breakfast
in an empty house we’ve never occupied.
THE EMPTY HOUSE
I come back to the dream: the darkened house, the empty rooms,
with only an angled streetlamp bathing the walls and floors in pale light.
The telephone has long gone silent.
I know I’m walking through a dream but it doesn’t reveal more
other than to say: you’re on your own
regardless of rain or chill in the moist air.
I don’t want to disturb what rests here
but couldn’t if I wanted to. I only know
the proclivities this recurring dream has reinforced,
stirring and blending with the others disjointedly.
So I list each day, a leaning curse like a once-glorious yacht
tilting on a long stretch of beach. The ocean,
streaming to shore in thin, wide-waves,
pulls the sand from once settled places
aligning awkwardly with the proclivities I’ve come to.
I’m toiling to enjoy my remaining time the best way I know
in the circle of people I’ve chosen. If only I could forever keep them
on the checkerboard of my life,
the seemingly-random lateral and retreating moves
and reclaim the joy I’d once known—the art of adding colour
to a colourless world in the white and pale-gray of another day.
The handwriting of the empty house is the tidemark
in the art of another time, where doors don’t reopen—
will never reopen. It sits isolated as a place lost
when time too is lost along its silenced walls—
once the heart of life itself—and will no longer say
what I thought they always would. The language now incompatible
with the one I’d spoken—but it still startles me
when I hear those off-balance words
and live the challenges they inflict daily.
SR (Salvatore Richard) Inciardi was born in New York City and attended Brooklyn College and New York University. SR Inciardi’s poetry has appeared in in various online and print magazines including Green Ink Poetry, Harrow House Journal, Front Porch Review, Grey-Sparrow Journal, Borderless Journal, Written Talesamong others. He was a contributor to Green Ink Poetry for their publication on Kennings: Equinox Collections: Autumn released on Amazon in October 2024. SR Inciardi currently has two books of poetry on Amazon that speak to loss and navigating grief.
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