A free diver dropped over 800 feet
into the ancient darkness of the sea
whose silence brought him into its
body and squeezed.
How long does it take the mind
to forget the halls and rooms of sound?
I’ve worn quiet like a blanket
in the dusty waters of Lake Michigan,
treading water too far from the shore to swim,
with lights gone out from an anchored
and sleeping boat at my back.
The silverblack lake makes space
for the petrified prayer of the heart.
And in that silence I have smelled incense,
its soft towers swirling under the stars,
whose shining has become
the many voices of a massed choir.