Silence Lingers

Silence lingers with

tones of forgiveness

Like the messy empty room

Of my teenager who left

For school shouting her good-bye

with a slammed door

As I find the sticky note

on my bathroom mirror

Written years ago

“I love you so much mom”

Silence lingers with

smells of unmet longing to feed

Like the air in kitchen of

Uneaten pancakes left

behind by my college bound son

As I find his text on my phone

Written today from his dorm

“thank-you for making me breakfast”

Silence lingers with

Variable obscurity of vision

Like the condensation on windshield

Of the car as it left the driveway

With my husband as he departed for

his solo photography road trip this am

Or like the cold & creamy soup left

on the stove that I didn’t get delivered

to the Community dinner this afternoon

as I felt a tickle of contagion in my throat

Silence lingers on my tongue

Often as I spend more time

listening to the face of my dog

then to my best friends’ worries

within their busy lives sandwiched

between eldercare & childcare

Silence lingers here in this roomy house

Once packed with

Too many worries & wants

Too many toys & life threatening allergies

Too many dirty socks& forgotten dishes

Too many beings of different ages&stages

As I leave this house of unpacked silence now

for a walk by myself

in the waiting woods with a new found

Unanswerable freedom—

a freedom of hearing silence from the future

and all it can sing to me in the lingering