from From the Home Place

One does not have to turn to listen.
Airborne at the middle ear,
molecular,
each damped and stronger sound prompts its allied

hair-cell to fire. No more than a
smear at first,
the spell each sound is there for has its

onset and rise,
its temperings whose
play across the membranes no one
other repeats.
Dispersed toward him with the rest from what he

sees of her face,
the silences themselves are telling.
Of moment, every
nasal, glide and spirant,

every stop.
Time for them
all there is, these many, her express
fugitive and dative phonemes.
He has made them out.

James McMichael