thinking about silence

Perhaps because we've been talking about class discussion in my Methods class, perhaps because I'm thinking about classroom discourse as always, perhaps because I had a really peculiar dream on Saturday night in which my house was so noisy, I couldn't hear the strangers who had appeared to reveal to me the secret of my life, I've been thinking about silence. Here's what came out in my journal today:

Reverence

What could we learn
from the space between our words
when we bare the flats of wrists
the backs of knees,
make vulnerability visible
beneath linked cuffs and nylons?
Silence threatens to embrace us
and so we drop our eyes
lick a finger pray for wind
for any subject that will neutralize
our trembling at its mercies.
But if I were to trace
your snaky temples
and you my furrowed brow
(these little deaths),
we could revere them.
Nothing more
would need be said
be done
but bowing.