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Student of Silence
Been in the back of this room so long, I’ve become
a feature of the inevitable, the one who knows just
enough to say very little, the master of awkward silences,
the recipient of as little as I care to offer, the reckless
statistic they watch for, but rarely do anything about.
It’s my silence, I am the pacifist stretched out on
the train tracks of certainty, while the railroad rattles
and rumbles up just so far and never-never any further.
I stop them in their tracks. I’m a diversion, a tangent,
a rest area with no facilities, a blip, a blink.
I have dedicated my life, so far, to shades and shadows, to
nothing even remotely connected to any of this, this flaw,
this fumble in my day. I am beginnings and ends, with very
little of note in between. I’m an answer with no question,
a question with no answer, a question best answered
with silence.
J.K. Durick presently a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont,
after a long career teaching literature, humanities, and writing at Trinity
College of Vermont. His recent poems have appeared in the SN Review, Onion River
Review, Delta Epsilon Sigma Journal, and in the anthology, The Breath of Parted
Lips: Voices From the Robert Frost Place.
Email: J.K. Durick
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