I have wrapped my head in my arm
like a wing
I can hear a bird:
distant, or muted by the noise of house machines
I feel the pressure of my arm
and my tightening jaw
but not the blood in my body
or the healing of small sores - incurred in gardening or baking bread or being, finally, left behind.
I can't hear tomorrow coming - sunrise is silent.
the dread of it, or of night's slipping past, isn't so loud as my hair rustling in my fingers.
And the many voices that filled the space of thirty years
are silent though I summon them