Journey to Silence

By Royal Rhodes

---

Such silence enmeshes us. How you hear in it
each change in the cascade of fountain-spray
on the waiting water of a marble pool.
And over the laurel a feeling: three or four

leaves that a butterfly has stripped. To you
it trembles past on the weight-bearing breath of the valley,
and you think back to another time
when it already appeared so perfect to you.

The stillness around a mystery. Was it not more?
Isn't it increasing? Isn't it out of control?
Isn't it pushing almost as if in resistance

upon your thundering heart? 
Its stroke breaks somewhere
in a noiseless pause in the day.

There. He is there.

---

Royal Rhodes taught religious studies for almost 40 years. His poems have appeared in various journals, including Ekstasis, Ekphrastic Review, The Seventh Quarry, and The Montreal Review, among others. His poetry and art collaborations have been published with The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina.

Royal's other work on Foreshadow:
A Road Through Ohio Spring (Poetry, April 2023)
A Pilgrim's Song (Poetry, May 2023)