to hear

after I lost my voice

I started listening

to the upstairs neighbor's woody tenor

a deep echo under water

and the jazzy raspy pitch of the lady at the bar

that sweetly chirping flute- small children in the park

and on the crowded subway car

(yet in such solitary stifle)

I prayed that people speak!

I longed to know the texture of so many strangers' souls

from the way their words dripped, oozed, burst~

escaped as breathy whispers in the cold

but behind my desperate thirst,

the strange and sorry truth

that in exchange for this new faculty

(oh, suddenly to hear!)

the fiat- to be mute