It’s sometimes best
to take refuge in silence
when everything seems false—
even the appliance touch-up paint
I applied to the nicked edge
of our kitchen sink
and the helicopter plant I carried out
to the sun porch again
after the danger of freezing
had passed, and the friendly
letter to your old lover
that I not-so-accidentally discovered
in your e-mail messages
and which, in itself, doesn’t mean much
although I didn’t say a word about it
because I didn’t want to start
another argument, nor will I speak
of the model suspension bridge
our young son has been building
from wooden popsicle sticks
for the Science Olympiad
at his school.
Michael Colonnese is the author of Sex and Death, I Suppose, (which he describes as a hard-boiled detective novel with a soft Jungian underbelly) published by Oak Tree Press, and of two award-winning poetry collections, Temporary Agency, published by The Ledge Press, and Double Feature, published by Big Pencil Press, which received the Gell Poetry Prize from Writers and Books. A retired university professor and co-founder of Longleaf Press, he currently lives in the mountains of western North Carolina, near Asheville.