The Quiet: 9 Poems

Reba May

The Fox

I saw the fox, red as brick, sleeping under the evergreen tree
When the snow was falling in the front yard, it had darted across the street, aglow with the yellow hum of lampposts
In the quiet of a winter night, I ran with the thawing streams until the cold wind caught me in its arms and froze me in my sleep
And wearily I crept back into bed, underneath the evergreen tree
The only thing that mattered was a good night’s sleep and the rise of the sun in the early morning
And I dreamt of birds and mice and things I could not catch beyond my reach.

The Quiet

It was quiet, now.
Maybe the whirring of the heating had paused.
Maybe the leaky faucet had finished dripping.
Maybe the laughter of the women outside had been carried off with the wind.
I wasn’t sure if it was any of these things, but it was quiet, now.
The ponds of ice upon the black tar of the market parking lot had begun to thaw this morning.
You know what I mean.
It was a beautiful thing.

Untitled

Blessed be the times of year
Songs of hope and death and fear
Live with caution but not abound
Follow what’s not known around
Look for strangers on the trains
Who sit idly in their separate plains
For you and them, you are the same
There’s no creation to be saved
From the spring of dying
Crying are the woven odes
Sung to sailors young and old
You, my friend, are growing cold
Blood and ice run just the same
Flowing from a head of grain
In the wind they blow the rain
Out of the eyes of baby’s cranes
There is no promise in a return
From the life of trying
Weapons arm the mass brigades
Sally’s mother works a poor man’s wage
Tender are her blue eyes of age
While sunken ships of foreign aid
Feel fleets of thunder pound the sky
And all you ever do is sigh
You are no good friend of mine
Unbridled by the changing times
There is no sweet lullaby that comes from a song of lying
The homeless man paces on sticks of gum
He shakes his fist at no one
And you, my friend, are not so young
You’re hopeless like a broken click
Found there’s nobody to turn the stick
Only you are the savior of your own tongue
Standing outside like a gas station bum
You’ve got no reasons left to run
There is no sense in moving on
Only a thrill of flying.

My Sea

I want to be by the sea
My sea, my cold, biting unforgiving sea of the Atlantic
Not your sea, not your shell-less beaches
Not your sea, the warmth of the water under the midnight moon rocking the sailboat far off into the horizon
Take me back to my sea
Whether I float or fly
I want to be bitten by my sea
Rather than the sting of gnats on my thigh
You’d say I always find something to complain about
And maybe that’s in my nature
But I’ve been gone enough to miss my sea
And the sands that surround its waters.

Uninspired

Hope- like rain, pours down from the sky
Patterns the pavement and withdraws the damp smell of the asphalt
Ground, like mounds of dirt, sit idly
Moved from place to place
Location to location
Centimeters from where they came
And now I sit, unimpressed by all that I’ve seen
I prayed for some kind of solitude, a spiritual awakening of the bones
Shot through me like an arrow, like lighting,
But the sky only peppered me with drops of rain
And fizzled out again
Ducks crowd the Connecticut river, ritualistically abiding by the laws of nature
Still, so beautiful, their offspring clump together behind a washed up log
Chirping under the hot summer rain
I watch them as I stare out to sea, hopelessly undriven
Lousy with promise
Maddeningly uninspired.

Hollow

Trees, tall and proud like my father
Rivers babble to themselves
And the air hangs damp
Scratched names into the wood
Upon the trees like ivory
I’ll play for a while
Hollow, like the first breaths of autumn
Like the inside of the willow trees
And the deep fears inside of me
Hollow, like shelter from a storm
Brittle branches broken falling into the stream
Babble babble, talk to me my weeping willow
When do you get the chance to sleep?
We all must
When do you stop ebbing into the reeds and thrush?

Do I But Dream?

I wonder why we say “I love you” with goodnight?
Why words of comfort are tied to those of goodbye?
Do I but dream what wonders seek me tonight?
Or shall I hide beneath my pillow
To die a cowards fight

And when I awake, do I but see
The warmth of willows against the buzzing of bees?
Or shall I lay frozen in the icy snow
Within the wings of perilous, silver marigolds?

So I wonder why we say “I love you” with goodnight,
Why words of wisdom are given at no plight?
Yet the dangerous man yearns to seek
The dream which is not his to keep

And so tenderly, I travel through the fields of silver marigolds
I make my way into the local pubs and casinos
Do I but dream through the clouds of smoke
A spotless mark of endless hope?

I wonder why we say, “I love you” with goodnight?
In between hushed whispers and lullabies
Could the dreams we seek be no more than traveled valleys,
That we fall back into amongst routined pubs and alleys?

The Snow

The snow falls flat against my face
As pale as it seems, it’s beauty found disgrace
Flurries capture what my heart cannot,
A storm so void of tumultuous rot,
Yet as I stand with my back to the door,
A sudden calm oozes into my pores
For what is the snow, if not my love?
A boundless stream in which I am a conscious part of.

Roving Fury Gun

Rhinestone belt, Turkish felt, the queen of self-destruction
Grabs gooses by the neck and plucks them for the ocean
Passion twisting wrenching covers
Bed sheets blue rooms broken shutters
Made of heat and hate in feat
Festered blisters born of sleet
Rain reels red against the roving fury gun

Vying vortex flying horses dreams of sterile starts
Notice nothing going gunking shaking something fall apart
Bad brunches saddened lunches beaten eggs with a stone
Mold and waste and chicken paste
Pliers teeth and written waste
Rain reels red against the roving fury gun

Flashing few dashing new crashing blue sentimental pods
Blue tails ribbon trails pieces of a broken heart
Bending being trying fleeting crying with an open sword
Fighting nothing sighing curtains
Draping over a bronze bust of God
Rain reels red against the roving fury gun.

Reba May is a fourth-semester student at Berklee. She’s a songwriting major from a small, shoreline town in Connecticut. She attended ACES Educational Center for the Arts for high school, where she studied drama and film. She spent her first year of college abroad at the Berklee Valencia campus in Valencia, Spain. She enjoys playing guitar and writing. Her main focus, musically, is folk and americana, however her background revolves around classical music. Reba loves traveling and learning languages in her free time.