What I'm About To Say Poem by Francis Poole

WHAT I'M ABOUT TO SAY


What I'm about to say
comes from a distant place
in someone's mind
maybe yours
where light is opaque
and memory little more than
the tissue scraps of dead fables.
Forgotten voices too
must live somewhere
ricocheting off hardened silence
in a mash up of sound and sense.
The one lone voice
I want to hear again
is muffled by
the sound of the wind
scattering dry leaves.
It may have said
all there was to say
and set meaning free
to float like a tiny hand
in a giant glove
the fingers grasping only
empty space.
Even so I will try to
cleanse my ears
with the white noise
of distant stars
and listen for faint echoes
of what I have heard before and
what I'm about to say.

--Francis Poole