Lost Fire

Have it your way:
And freeze it in the snow.

Classify, divide.
Or lump these words
Together on a slide.

Remove poetry to one side
So listening silence
Is nothing.
The nothing that is.

Nothing that is not there,
A hymn in the air.

Blown wind that winds
Through the double helix
Of our creation,
And back again.

Sound.
No sound.

Don’t tell me.
Vibration without
Reverberation.

A noiseless crackling.

(Originally Published in the Wallace Stevens Journal, Spring 2018)