A May Day Conversation

The wind blows through the trees.
The leaves speak to the wind
and I hear their conversation.
To be so free, to fly so high,
like a bird or a kite,
but this is all a cliche.
I'm not interested in flying, I'm interested in listening.
And what I hear are allegations.

The leaves fear that they will be silenced;
the wind is afraid that its voice will not be heard.
They accuse each other; instead of recognizing
that in each other their vulnerbilities are erased.
And so the wind blows harder and the leaves shake louder.
This shouting competition, driven by a need to be heard, to be validated,
ends up in silence. As the autumn moves to winter,
leaves change their color,
and the wind knocks them to the ground.
The wind stops speaking when the leaves are all gone.
No more poetry, no more music, no more discourse; a muted cupid.

A young girl at home in a suburban nation,
listens to the soft steady rain fall on the jungle pavement.
Each drop, a note in a symphony that plays in her head.
But this masterpiece will never be heard;
her parents, her sisters, her brothers have all gone to work
and she slowly goes crazy because the suburban silence is deafening;
until the silence makes her wish the rain drops would turn into bombs.
Her symphony has turned into war.

Like a solider from world war one,
she went over the top with her gun.
She smelled the tear gas; heard the shelling,
but she couldn't hear herself yelling.
She was lost in no man's land;
a place where no man should land.
Like ghosts of the damned,
whisping across the sky searching for tranquility;
she ran across the scarred countryside--jumping from crater to crater--
searching for serenity.
The guns finally stopped, but there were no more trees and no more leaves.
And the wind moved silent through the sky,
like a blank stare in a suburban girl's eye.
I ask the wind, can one speak if there is no one to listen?

A young boy visits his father's grave
and listens for a voice to stave
off the pain of an entire past of emptiness.
He falls to his knees asking for an answer,
but a hush from heaven echoes the silence from his father.
He hears the wind blow because new leaves have grown.
but alas, anew allegations are sown.
They whisper: you will suffocate my chorus; you will kill me.
And the boy thinks about his father's legacy:
a taciturn gesture, a reticent embrace, a suffocated love.
All these lead to accusations and accusations lead to silence.
The silence of a boy standing on a dead man's grave.
I ask the leaves, can one listen if there is no one to speak?

A mundane revolutionary act; to speak, to listen, without contention.
The wind blows through the trees.
The leaves speak to the wind
and I hear their conversation, without allegation;
it brings me peace.