Beggar At The Feast Poem by Pamela Spiro Wagner

We've learned to hear them, haven't we,
the sounds of silence in subway graffiti,
in a Zen hand clapping,
and on the railway trestle
over the thruway, in names
we’ve seen a hundred times
Tracy
Eye-ris
! ! ! LEO! ! !

without hearing,
which according to physicists
doesn't matter: a tree falls in the forest
and bodies vibrate - leaves,
loam, the rush of air filling the space
left behind: sound.

Thirty-five years ago,
when words came between us,
my father stopped speaking to me,
his lockjaw shunning so brutal, so righteous,
those years I still endured the holidays
I detoured my requests for salt, the gravy,
to the next person down the table,
aware of the lightning-struck air
the dangerous thrum
his silence telegraphing: All
visits cancelled. Stop.
Do not come home.
Stop.

The earth sings, yes,
but not necessarily for us
not necessarily meaning anything
we can profit by understanding,
which is what mattered yesterday
on my half-mile last lap
when I heard a father bellow
at his small daughter, the caustic scald
pumped clear through a half-open
window:
“Listen, young lady, when I say no
I mean no. Do you hear me? ”
And she, flaming up, scorched,
helpless: “I hate you! I hate you! ”
as if her utterance,
like the bottlenose dolphin’s,
were enough to stun, deafen, kill.

And what, finally,
of my own father’s silence?
Over the relatives’ gossip, from his end
of the Thanksgiving table
where we gathered together
as usual, came jokes like winter roses -
blooms for the rest of the family

but only the bite for me,
on my knees outside the family pale,
forever beyond the kingdom
and the power.