Praise to the door clicking shut,
to absence warming up the room,

but not completely: fireplace flame still
spitting its lazy opinions, radiator

humming its calm, the floorboard’s creak
letting you know it’s still there 

but won’t interrupt like the brash
morning jazz your husband plays

before coffee opens the ears
to thought and conversation.

Here: the louder hush of outside world
kept out—wind, occasional cat,

an emergency (not yours)
begging for someone else 

to run, or fix, or bark commands
that can’t break into this cordoned-off

zone of chosen contemplation—
where, sometimes, even now, you hear

the memory of waves, the scratch
of sole on sand, the swirl of shells, and even

your chin lifting into salty air 
as you listen not for the lost

and gone, but for what is
there and here inside

the ear and the empty
house, not empty after all.


Previously published in Heart Beats (Prolific Pulse Press, ed. Lisa Tomey) and The Grotto.

Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published thirteen collections of poetry, including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize), Begin with a Question (Paraclete), and Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts), an ekphrastic collaboration with photographer Karen Elias. She is also the author of the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite) as well as four children’s and YA books and is the co-editor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry. The recipient of numerous awards, she gives workshops and readings around the world. For more information, please see www.marjoriemaddox.com