The Photographer

Silence swept over her rice paddies,

a midsummer noon, the sky a vanishing

in blueness. The stone bridge, ancient,

honored the hour, the promise, an arc

of water, beyond the parable, a rainbow

predicted and explained and yet

wholly ungraspable. As ever he struggled

to make himself free, to listen at last

and be one with his silence. She

fell in a deep sleep, curled in his

picture, fainter than his breathing.

Out in the light he understood.

A dream passed. It was on a voyage.

In the lucid water a movement swirled,

a dark fish swam: “No one can resist

the curious taste of a certain sound.”