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by Edna Wallace

Hard to imagine when it’s not—
when you’re sitting
in Starbucks,
huddling in the winter
warmth,
sipping a steamed milk,
trying to focus
amid the music
blaring its rock-heavy
distraction.

You’re distracted—
watching the man
talking at a white wire,
the girls laughing
at their laptops,
the crinkled woman
leaning over her
shopping cart
full of paper and cans.
Hard to imagine in that space.

But it’s a gift,
in its time,
that inscrutable gift of quiet.
It’s a time to reflect.
How can you not?
In that space,
it all comes up. 

They live there:
the things you fear,
the things
you treasure.
It happens
in the black of night,
when you wake
up before dawn.
It happens.

It’s not bad.
It’s just a time
when the decks
are cleared,
when you are with you.
You can think
or be…
whichever is safer.

It happens
when a poet
pauses
in his lines.
It happens
when you pause
in the throes of
Starbucks.

Everything happens
in that space—
the good,
the bad,
the magnificent,
the terrible.

The quiet holds it all.
The quiet is
really your time—
it’s what you have.
You can choose to listen.

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