Amy Gordon
A Tune I Keep Hearing
Listen. Behind the dark silence
of the dark, a stubborn tune
persists. The song says oak leaves
are falling. Must fall, diminish,
fade. Does not explain
why every generation generates
a holocaust. But the melody
is there. The song says, Dance.
Can we dance cheek to cheek?
Can we turn the other cheek?
We are dancing in the dark.
How many more mass graves?
Streams are running underground.
Oak leaves rustle beneath my shoes.
The song is sorrow, the song is silver.
Behind dark silence there is never silence.
Amy Gordon is the author of numerous books for young readers, including When JFK Was My Father (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) and Painting the Rainbow (Holiday House, 2014), both works of historical fiction haunted by helpful ghosts. Her poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Aurorean, Plum, Blue Nib, and in the anthology Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2018).
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