A Deafening Silence

Silent on a stool at the servery,
mind drifting upon nothingness,
I am uneasy.
This is so faintly familiar –
a distant grinding, like a coffee machine
I borrowed once –
warm dripping water,
a faintness in my hearing
as dead as a moth bobbing in water
whilst breaths of wind nibble the pool’s edge.
I am restless
in this noiseless vacuum –
relentless –
strange yet strangely familiar –
a yesterday of someone else’s.
Air switched off – a wi-fi of silence –
no device is no device.
I have a distant inclination
of life twenty years ago,
did I live through that?
Now I sit unstimulated,
there are pinpricks up and down my spine,
my fingers twitch, my eyes squint.
My device, my device,
where did I leave it?
I can barely believe this is me –
the same me –
when sound was not necessary,
when silence was not daunting,
when stimulation was not constant.
Is this really me?  A gentle sense
of passing time – infectious, how it grows –
is a silence, impatient and deafening,
a yesterday that was not born
to an addiction of stimulation.

Michael Cunliffe