Reverb

Poetry

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

Reverb

~for George Bilgere

When you’ve finished reading
a book of poems, or maybe a novel,
for a brief while the voice in your head
is not the voice you’ve always known.

If they’ve done their job well,
the writer’s voice continues to speak
from the endless darkness,
that yawning black circle

which we recognize as the well
of consciousness, of our mind.
It’s something mysterious, yet so familiar,
this transmigration of voices

as if behind the veil of common light,
there has always been more,
a huddled choir of authors
like violin bows thrumming

without their violins.
And finally, we come to understand violence.