poem
Volume 27, Number 2

If you’re watching Face the Nation

without the audio
to observe the cavalcade of chins
flapping up and down
under matched pairs of eyebrows
that rise and fall, and a hand or two
wagging back and forth
for a very long time
before coming to rest under
one of the aforementioned
chins, it could well remind you
of those furtive creatures
not wired for sound—
the snakes and armadillos, mollusks,
worms, my white cat, white minks,
and octopi, living out their lives
in the silence that is their lot,
oblivious to the conversations of men,
of wolverines with wind, of running water
with the growl of thunder, and the croon
of mourning doves who think nothing
of interrupting the steady rain to talk.


—Marilyn L. Taylor