Between Silences Two Prose Poems by Joanna Drake

Between Silences

Between silences I could hear the steady thump-thump of your beating heart; its inner chambers working to sustain life no matter how frail the body or brittle the bone. You would fill that space with eyes that pleaded, that wept, eyes that searched for escape or recognition. Between silences I created worlds for you, recounted all the lives you had lived. Those rheumy eyes once peered through the lens of a microscope watching life divide itself into a dozen different miracles. Those searching eyes often sought a dance partner on wood-paneled floors ready to dance the Charleston. Between silences, as you lay in a too-white room that smelled of formaldehyde and false hope, you saved the last dance for him.

Aokighara (Sea of Trees)

It is a forest like any other. Light falls lazy between heaven-reaching cypress and cedar. Brown limbs gather, beaded with perspiration, roped together in whispered chorus. Hidden in the volcanic underbelly of Japan’s holy mountain, resting amid cool earth and smooth stone, swaying softly in needled pine is Mother’s sweet symphony.

anguish and regret
wrapped in midnight kimono
blossom in the breeze

Joanna Drake is a recently hatched poet from Austin, TX who stumbled into poetry through good fortune and great coffee. She finds inspiration and the stuff of life rooted in poems written by her blue-eyed contemporaries. She hopes to apply for MFA programs this coming December, loves to laugh, and enjoys drinking poetry with her morning coffee. She has been previously published in Austin Community College’s literary journal Rio Review. This is her first online publication.