Double Exposure
What can be said can be said clearly;
the rest we must pass over in silence.
            —Wittgenstein

This maddening thought—lips might meet.
What we can't speak we pass over in silence.
Winter sticks in the makeshift sky, the concrete

outside ground down to crumbs.
Trees maintain their terse positions, shyness
in an instant struck over and over—

Clouds pass over in silence—what we cannot speak.
Lips might meet: a thought that maddens.
Light crumbles; flowers flung in the trashcan.

As clouds meet like lips in silence,
flowers passed over in silence, shyness
flung into the trashcan.

We madden with what we cannot speak—

Copyright © 2003 Jane Satterfield All rights reserved
from Assignation at Vanishing Point
Elixir Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission