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