After the salmon pulp I squeezed
The sunlight from the two halves.
I remember this now as I recalled
Something then, coloring outside
The lines of separation, digging
To get as much out as I could.
In the earlier light that almost
Chartreuse ball hid the possibility
Of a one made two, of the next thing
I would encounter after breaking
Apart the whole thing.  Who could
Have known what sweetness there
Might be, there between the color?

These are the days when
I could be doing anything
But I am doing this now:
Standing on the gray deck,
Arms raised, pulling in signals
From the world. Everything is
Bringing  from the future. And
Receving the future takes work.
It could be in the mailbox or my
Ear. The nuthatch at my door,
Just blue and shadow. The wind
Coming across, something is waving.
It says, "sustain this."  I can't.  It
Lands on faded prayer flags tacked
To the rail. Dropping my arms I think
About these things and for this moment
And the next,  I forget the world.

"The world is everything," he said. "And the earth can take it away."

No one was quite sure how it happened. At first we thought. " it must be our phones." But then people without phones said, "no." There was talk of aliens and terrorists for a while but no one showed up from out there, no one from over there. People continued to talk, lips moved, just habit I guess. There was widespread speculation that other creatures such as dogs and whales were unaffected. Someone was looking into that. But the upshot of it all was that not a single human being on the planet could hear. The transmission of sound had ceased. We thought of exposure but new borns smiled and gurgled when that dictionary hit the floor. The truth was we had been turned off. For a while closed caption was the rage, then signing. Subtitles flew off the shelves.   But eventually we realized that it just wasn't the same. Nothing would ever be the same. "Thank god we have texting and the internet." tapped many of us. But in this world of silence a great longing pushed us past our technology. We became exquisite monitors of motion. We began to notice. We began to share ourselves because there was less and less between us. We stopped flying and mass transit became massively entertaining because we wanted to be close. We walked and felt and paid attention. Instead of movies we began to watch each other. We stopped for clouds and storms moving in. We became vigilant. We saw things that the sun did, and at night, things the moon did. And we stayed close. Close enough to remember touch, close enough to hold each other's faces in our hands when we wanted to express something. And when it finally dawned on us that the world was holding our faces in its hands, a morning came when we heard a jay call, the wind rustle a curtain, and voices through our very breaths.

You are not surprised at the force of the storm-
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee.  Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming.  And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward.  All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything.  You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit;
now it becomes a riddle again,
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain.  Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered
leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

-Rilke's Book of Hours, Love Poems to God
Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

"Are we in for a surprise?
  The future is like magic.  It wears no robes or veils but arrives naked,
tossing its surprises to the right and the left.  How does it arrive? It
neither comes from ahead nor do we enter it running.  This is because
it and we can only approach what is always coming toward it and us.
There is no possible action or sound that can be made without being
received elsewhere, thereby describing and deciding the future which
only wears the attributes of something recognized as past.
   Is there such a thing as truth objectively speaking?  This question
curves around and demands that I ask myself why I am asking the
question in the first place, what good an answer will do for me before
I am annihilated.  If I am convinced tha the story of your life and
thought reveals the truth about our condition on this planet, then
wil I be happier as I proceed? Why else am I asking it?"

-Excerpted from The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation by Fanny Howe