silences & ambiguities

in everyday life silences & ambiguities have
so much (to) say--
suppose, for example, you compared billboards
(the public persona) of communist Cuba, 
where you might read 
something like, Long live the Revolution!
or, Onward to Victory forever!
...with capitalist America, where you can read,
Come to where the flavor is, or Think Different.
...with blood-brother Japan, 
where you're likely to come across 
something along the lines of 
searching for myself, or I'm here saying nothing.
admittedly, such 'signs of the times' are subject to
change, but...

                          ii

not a peep from the world today.
great silences fill
the void, the poem going
as close to the divine as
sanity allows--holding 
its heart wide in 
the openness on which the moment
and its wholeness perches,
as if on your hand, feeding... until finally it’s had its fill, and flies
off past the billboard that reads
Save changes before closing?
into the distance, way past where you say Yes or No.




Botsford, Alan. mamaist: learning a new language. Kamakura, Japan, Minato No Hito, 2002.