Balinese National Day of Silence
honoring the Hindu New Year.
In two wing beats, our pileated woodpecker glides
to the woods where I have seen his mate.
January first. My world is muffled in snow.
A sparrow scallops the air. A few finches, their yellow
muted by winter, wing feeder to feeder.
The snow begins to fall again. I imagine the birds’
hunger, imagine them late in the night
huddled deep in pockets of pine and spruce,
hearts slowed, bony feet gripping boughs, waiting
for the Earth to revolve again toward the light,
spin silent in space, quiet as snow settling on snow.
This poem first appeared in the Atlanta Review (2021 International Poetry Contest finalist).
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Marion Starling Boyer is a professor emerita of Communication and has published three full-length poetry collections and three chapbooks. Her book, Ice Hours (2023), won the University of Michigan’s Wheelbarrow prize and was named “New and Noteworthy” by Poets & Writers. Her chapbook, What Word for This, won Grayson Books 2023 competition. Boyer lives in Twinsburg, Ohio, home of the annual world gathering of twins. She conducts workshops for Lit Cleveland. www.marionstarlingboyer.com.
