Issue 18: Sound & Silence

Single Issues > 2010 > Issue 18: Sound & Silence > Kyrie Eleison

Julie L. Moore

Kyrie Eleison

For thence,—a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,—
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail . . .
—Robert Browning, “Rabbi Ben Ezra”

Mockingbirds flutter by, flashing
the white patches on their gray wings
amid their dance, flaunting before us
the way all lovers do with their public displays
of affection. We talk about whether we’ll reach 50,
my husband and I, sitting on the front porch,
bemoaning the many ways our health
has failed—his high blood pressure, bad heart,
my slow and complicated recovery
from my seventh surgery, turning up one new pain
after another. One mockingbird pulls
a refrain from his ever-expanding
repertoire. Come, he seems to croon.
Grow old along with me.
We long for the years of our young
marriage when we solved each ache
with Tylenol. One swallow. And done.
The other mockingbird, now perched on our roof,
chatters away, sending forth a tune
we cannot translate, a mystery that envelops us.
I look at my husband and love him more and more
and want to call to him like these birds,
want to tell him that we, too, may be a song
on some untamed tongue.

Julie L. Moore is the author of Slipping Out of Bloom (WordTech Editions) and the chapbook Election Day (Finishing Line Press). A previous contributor to Ruminate and winner of the Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize in 2008, Moore is also the recipient of both the Rosine Offen Memorial Award from the Free Lunch Arts Alliance and the Judson Jerome Poetry Scholarship from the Antioch Writers’ Workshop. Recent work has appeared in American Poetry Journal, CALYX, The Missouri Review Online, New Madrid, and The Southern Review. Moore enjoys long walks in rural Ohio where she lives, writes, and directs the writing center at Cedarville University. (www.julielmoore.com)