snowflakes

Snowflakes

In Japan there are various words and nuances for “silent” or “silence”. Shizuka means total silence. Chinmoku is reticence, holding back or, more intriguing, the silence between the notes. For Real Toads, 30 in 30. This is day five. This is the farthest I have gone in NAPOWRIMO Day 5.

Snowflakes
Shizuka –
the first snowflake is silent –
at night they drift –
falling one by one
slowly piling into drifts –
silent they fall into the night –
the wind gets into them
blowing them this way and that –
chinmoku – they hold back their words
their noise their speaking –
sound comes from the wind
or the tree branches rattling –
the snowflakes speak
various forms of silence –
snowflakes fall – drift –
only the owls hear them –
gliding through snowflakes –
they hunt more silent
than the snowflakes – I walk
among them listening to
the silence of the flakes,
the swish of the owl’s wings