The Silence Steep Track Keeps Better Than I Keep Mine

They barred the road above the New Quarter two mornings running, and offer none — no notice on the post, no word from the toll-keeper’s mouth, and offer none.

The mule-trains circle east through the crowded sprawl now, cursing a plank no wider than a shoulder, while the hill above keeps its whole argument, and offers none.

I held a red under the vat an hour past when it should have taken evenly and watched it refuse me — some resistance lives already in the fiber, asked or not, and answers none.

A boy swears the new bar smells of green oak, not rot mended quietly over years; whatever closed that road closed it on purpose, fresh, this week, and offers none.

They are settling a house on Guild Row this week on twenty-two years of ordinary Thirddays rather than one proven hand — call that continuance a kind of proof, if it comforts you; the ink underneath offers none.

A gate two winters broken found, this week, a hand willing to look at it twice — not virtue, only rain enough at last to make the looking worth the morning; mended, it offers none.

I keep my own silences the way that hillside keeps its road — barred on purpose, plainly, freshly true to whoever still stands at the bottom guessing. Let them climb the long way round. I offer none.