On Louis Simpson's Saying Dan Gerber Should Write Poems About Car Crashes Since He Had Been a Racing Car Driver

The corners of the world are quiet:
mushrooms sprout, blow out, up in amazing silence
as trout, in sinuous choreograph, flex against the stream
Fido, my cat who wreathes her tail,
white bones of a coot I loved and wrote about
My father’s bone ash buried over sea
Roots whorling under worms who moil
mounds, mute gnawers in my wall
Bill’s banyan tree the root of which
cracks doom on rocks
The shadow of your face across the page
Your silent arias of love
Blueberry spider in the sun
hawser creak on dock
the pebble in my pocket
blood thundering in the stock still books I love
snow covering conflagrations in manure
citadels, cities of sowbugs, of ants
generations of mites, aphids in armies
 forests in death
The earth is filled with explosions
Stronger, because silent.
mute empires
planets
galaxies

turn over

in the stillness
in the darkness
in the night.