“A month alone behind closed doorsforgotten books, remembered, clear again.Poems come, like water to the poolWelling, up and out,from perfect silence”

“She remembered lying in the crevasse, buried by snow. She thought of that perfect silence. Also now, like then, no one knew where she was. This time too, no one would come. But she no longer expected them to. She smiled at the clear sky. With a little effort, she could get up by herself.”

“People dread silence because it is transparent; like clear water, which reveals every obstacle—the used, the dead, the drowned, silence reveals the cast-off words and thoughts dropped in to obscure its clear stream. And when people stare too close to silence they sometimes face their own reflections, their magnified shadows in the depths, and that frightens them. I know; I know.”

“We jumped into water so clear and warm that it was like jumping from air to air. The sand rose up under us and we floated to where it met the sea and walked out of the water like creatures in an act of evolution.”

“We hear nothing so clearly as what comes out of silence. ”

“He is remembering," I say."Remembering what?""It's a word I use for praying. Sometimes it's like waiting for music to come out of the silence.”