SPACES

in the harmonies of singers and speakers
words hum and circle round our bodies
enter noses mouths and ears
find hearts and heads to talk to
or touch them   hold them   in silence
what we hear is seldom what is said
when we speak we wonder what it means
what we heard in a song was a lifetime past
we always listen for a tune we know
when sudden quiet opens in the air
white static hisses in our ears
we hear tensile strings   signals from stars
music and noise inside the silence
the silent crossing up the ear canal
we swim each time we listen to ourselves

Jan Seagrave lives in Marin County, California, between coast live oaks and redwoods. She is part of an intergenerational co-housing experiment with two generations of her kids. The youngest child invents verses in the bathtub. Jan began as a university PR writer, moved into freelancing, then morphed into a storyteller. She got an MLIS and became a librarian, but now gets to be a poet. Jan’s poetry appears in journals, including Panoplyzine, San Pedro River Review, Kosmos and Big Windows Review; and in Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Redwood Writers Poetry Anthology and Amore: Love Poems (ed. Tucker).