This is the title poem of the first book collection,
"With House Silence."
It also is a little haibun.
"Then music got up and walked out of my life.
I didn't hear it tiptoeing away.
My hands and feet numb, I sat moving paper almost silently
from a tall pile onto a shorter one.
The world seemed the world was all.
I didn't hear it resign.
Only the paychecks stopped.
Free time.
Nothing to buy.
I thought the voice of every neighbor a smear of carbon
left on white soap cake.
Stopped reading newspapers to keep clean,
shoved the windows closed.
If birds sang, I did not know them.
It grew so quiet, I thought the card catalog no longer
included composers.
My composition was a doubt.
I became the color of walls then curtains.
One day when coal burned warmth back into me,
I reached for the dry sketches I had
performed above the calendar and saw that I was 33 years old.
The flute cold and blue velvet inside leather case and shyly
tampered with house silence.
Found birds, laughter, aimless humming, underpinnings,
arpeggiated softness, perfect hearing, coolness, rehearsal,
a return, first new song."