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Poems in honor of Ondis Eardensohn

Companionable Silence

Companionable silence,

Without a companion

Is only silence.

Not absolute silence,

The house still creaks

          In wind and cold

The furnace still

          Wheezes on and off;

The water filter still gurgles

Through its daily ablutions.

But these are mere mechanical sounds.

Companionable silence is

The sound of love choreographed

By time

Into dance;

A dance swaying to the rhythms

Of unspoken understandings;

Of shared chores

and mutual trust. 

Now those sounds fade

And while love remains

The dance falls silent. 


-Gregory Sanford

 

Gardens

The forecast warns,

Frost in the colder

Mountain hollows.

 

Hilltop-smug,

our garden is safe,

For now.

 

Yet our relationship changes.

No more unbounded future.

What we once nourished and grew.

We now seek to prolong and preserve.

 

For frost in the colder mountain

Hollows will metastasize

Until garden and

Gardener are gone.


-Gregory Sanford