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I asked the whitebark pine
a question, and he said to me,
“aren’t you glad we don’t all talk?”
And in silence he spoke:
a million voices whining, droning in
each other’s ears like a carnival madhouse?
Each leaf, each tendril, each rooty spine spinning
sounds, yabba, yabba, yabba, yabba.
The quiet madness of the mosquito multiplied
more than a million times over?
Aren’t you glad some of us convey
by bark, by bearing, by Being?
Aren’t you glad some of us commune
in the quiet witness of Living?
and in Silence, I understood.
- Gina Marie Mammano
