Notes on the Unspoken
by Deirdre O’Connor

What she doesn’t say could fill the fields like flocks
of crows, their collective stockiness landing
then strutting amid the cut-down corn, husks
and strips of stalk that roll in wind like grocery bags
or long, unfurled receipts.  What she doesn’t say
is a bevy of little detectives with beaks finding things out
on the ground, but telling essentially nothing.  Who listens?
Who would listen?  If only she would say one or two of the things.
Her silence keeps her under a roof.  From a window
she can watch the crows, their glossy, mordant beauty
so much like the beauty of rage.  En masse, arriving, departing,
they alter the semi-emptiness like hate or words
said out loud.  They go off with a great flapping, muted
by distance, same as when they come back.


from Before the Blue Hour by Deirdre O’Connor.
Copyright © by Deirdre O’Connor, 2002.
Used by permission of the publisher Cleveland State University Poetry Center.