1.

She was like that house upon the hill

that no one wants to live in

the one whose scarred walls

hold dark secrets and whose

darkened windows are like

empty eye sockets

that silent, uneasy house

which even the poltergeists avoid

no one ever goes there

but when you pass it there is

always a suggestion of movement

the sound of a door closing

a flicker of light in the emptiness—

haunted and haunting at the same time

2.

We were sitting at the edge of the river

exactly where we’d met a few days before.

 “There is a deathly silence today,” he said,

“‘Deathly’ is the wrong adjective for silence.

Death is not silent.

It is more vociferous than life and anyway

there is never complete silence,

the mind is continuously moving through

the quiet of the inanimate.”

“That’s rubbish.

Silent as the dead is a known idiom,” he replied.

“It is, so is the quote, ‘“silence speaks louder than words.’”

“Have you ever been to a cemetery, a morgue—

or better still a graveyard,

or stood ‘quietly’ where the dead are put to flames?

You must.

The noise of the dry bones overrides everything.

There is nothing louder than dead air,

a dead relationship, dead dreams, dead promises.

Death, my friend, is anything but silent.” I paused.

“Death may not be silent but silence can still be deathly

and that’s what I said” he insisted,

though I felt his conviction wavering a little.

“Silence is not just lack of movement or sound.

 It is the same with death.”