No One Listens to the Rain

1.

Darkness builds.
Rain batters stone.
Thunder to the east
and No One hears
the soft, terrible words
uttered by the first
to stumble onto
the massacre-site.

2.

Wind blows open
the door. The world
below follows
the scent of water
up to the surface.
No One hears
ancestors break
through dead leaves,
lift patches of dirt,
part small stones.

3.

Mist-rise off
the south ridge;
vapor turns in
on itself. No One
marks the space
between drops, hears
the child curled
inside the second
before her father's
last breath.

4.

The bent bough
absorbs rain, shakes
off rain. No One
hears fire, pages
softly curling black,
small flames trans-
forming words
to holes. Holes
merge.

5.

No One stares
into the black eye
of a fence lizard.
It blinks and the
world disappears.
When the world
reappears the rain
has stopped.

6.

Hollyhock buds
open. Yellow
mouths and red
mouths swallow
hummingbird
moths whole.
No One hears
their wings
beat against
the wall of the
plant's gullet;
psychopomps,
leading the rain
down . . .

No One Watches the Men Talk Behind Podiums

No One watches the press conference
over and over. Words endlessly

tumble out of official mouths. Insects
sucked dry. No One wonders how

these men managed to open holes
in the world with such shriveled words.

Holes that let the dead back in. All
the dead who believe they are owed

a second, a third, a fourth chance.
Endless repetitions: I'll get it right

this time. Victory will be my sun-
chalice, a golden wall. No One runs

outside, watches the hummingbird
moths in the lavender. Their wing-

chants, counterpoint to the sound
of bees. Tongues arc toward purple

blossoms. For a few seconds,
the tongues fill the holes torn in

the earth, the sky, in so many hands,
faces, torsos. When the moths speed

off, the holes return. No One breathes
in the trance-inducing lavender scent,

feels the dead words stir the air . . .
the dead words stir and stir . . .

No One Remembers the Beauty of the House Fire

Flames leapt 
beyond their own
smoke, toward rings 
of cold light 
around a full moon. 
No One stood vigil, 
witness to the lust 
shining off the eyes 
of the bystanders,
the relief of flame-
shadows across 
so many faces. No One 
knew they were
all cradling the same 
word inside them
(with love, with repulsion):

Beautiful . . . Beautiful . . . 

No One rushed up 
the front steps, grabbed 
the car keys inside 
the front door. A vortex 
of flame raged at 
No One's face (staring
into the open mouth 
of some hideous god, 
lost, bellowing its 
first and last word, 
the word that brought 
death-by-fire 
into being . . . ). Just as 
it reached No One, it 
turned up towards 
the second floor, following 
some other prey,

a stream of heretical words,
erotic, repulsive:

Beautiful . . . Beautiful . . .

No One Gets a Box in the Mail

For Freya

1.

Wind kicks snow-dust into the sun.
A box arrives on No One's doorstep.
The box is filled with singed letters,
smoke-damaged, thirty years old: ghost
loves, a non-existent father. Ink fades
into the page. Snow dust's crystal prism
breaks the pale winter light, reveals
purple, green, red: light turned inside out.
There is a letter from No One's grand-
mother. No One opens it. She says how
much she liked No One's description
of desert snow. No One puts the paper
down, looks out the window, confused.
No One wrote about desert snow
thirty years ago?

2.

In the letters: aftermath of a house fire,
a car crash, break-ups. Someone talks
of love, then talks of love lost. There are
photos with no faces—a butte, a telephone
booth, an ice covered 7-11 parking lot.
No One remembers. Cheyenne. News-
papers to keep warm in a VW bug.
And waking, shivering, shocked. Not
from the fear of freezing to death, but
of disappearing, never truly seen.

3.

Long shadows across blue snow. No
One wonders if there is anyone left alive
out there who knows their words are being
read once again? Does the sound come
to them in half-sleep? The sound of ice
wrapping itself around a spider's husk, still
hanging in a web outside the bedroom
window; or maybe the sound of branch-
shadows moving slowly across a
coyote fence?

4.

Moonlight tightens its grip on bare
apple branches. No One dreams of an
old woman, scratching the symbol for
snowdust-in-moonlight on an oracle bone:
a pair of wings woven into a rain of dark
stars (signifying light turned inside out).
No One watches her place the symbol
face-down on the cold ground. No One
knows time and death cannot be cheated,
or changed, but there is the hope that

the image will fuse with the earth,

will fuse with the earth,

will fuse . . .

Meditation for me has been associated simultaneously with Zen sitting, hiking/walking and poetry. After a certain amount of time on the cushion, and wandering among stones and trees, I found there was 'no point.' It’s the joke of meditation. What is the point of the poems of Han Shan? What's the point of a crow? What’s the point of a poem? Just like sitting or hiking, poetry (song) transforms the body/mind. An instant community forms when a poem is spoken aloud—even if there is No One around. Singing is the sixth sense.

Christien Gholson is the author of two books of poetry, On the Side of the Crow, Hanging Loose Press, and All the Beautiful Dead, Bitter Oleander Press, along with a novel, A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind, Parthian Books. A long eco-catastrophe poem, “Tidal Flats,” was published by Mudlark as one full issue. His blog is “Noise & Silence.” He lives in New Mexico.

More on Christien Gholson’s work can be found on our Links page.