Poem by MARC BEAUDIN & Art by CARRIE ALBERT
El Sonido del Mar es Silencio
by Marc Beaudin
Bird Without Borders, 2017, Drawing, Carrie Albert
1
Somewhere between
an endless field of morning-closed wildflowers
and the bitterness of another rented room
I stand waist-deep in the sea’s embrace
allowing the riptide to drag me through the sand
into a mystery we can know but once
Listen:
The way the wind sometimes
catches a dead leaf
and transforms it in the space of a pulse beat
into a bird taking flight
is the kind of miracle one should live for—
I have been told
that you must never watch
a bird fly past the horizon or it will take
a small part of your soul with it
But what is the soul
if not the sum
of the flights
of a thousand birds?
2
The sea at Puerto Madero is warmer than tears
eats continually at the feet of Chiapas
is sister not to the rivers of jungle valleys
and coffee plantations
but to the patient volcanoes
like Tacaná, thunder and haze
of the Guatemalan border
We spent two days climbing:
crossing the path of a death-offering snake
eating pan dulce with village children
and being questioned by the Mexican Army
on patrol, looking for Zapatistas
When they find them
let each soldier fall to his knees
and beg forgiveness for the last 500 years
Let them speak the names of the dead
Let their mouths be filled with the dust of the graves
Let this be true for every soldier
but more so
for every priest of the Pentagon
every general of Wall Street
every tycoon of Evangelism
Let it be true for you
and me
3
The sound of the sea
contains everything
swells out of control if we try to listen
overwhelms our capacity to hear until
infinite sound
becomes
silence
El sonido del mar es silencio
500 years in a single wave
Silencio
History rises and falls with a single tide
Silencio
It was the children who gave us sweet bread—
we had nothing
Silencio
Always: Another bird with eyes of ocean, takes to the sky.
Marc Beaudin, a former Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation artist-in-residence, is a poet, theatre artist and bookseller in Livingston, Montana. Books include Life List: Poems and the hitchhiking memoir, Vagabond Song: Neo-Haibun from the Peregrine Journals. His work has appeared in numerous journals including Cutthroat, High Desert Journal and Whitefish Review, and has been widely anthologized in publications dedicated to environmental and social justice. A CD/digital download, From Coltrane to Coal Train: An Eco-Jazz Suite, featuring music by members of the bands Morphine and Orchestra Morphine, is forthcoming. More at CrowVoice.com.
Carrie Albert: is an artist and writer. Drawings, collage, comics, photographs, sculpture, and visual art/poem pairings have been published and featured in numerous journals, most recently Ink Sweat & Tears, pacificREVIEW: The Mirror Maze, The Indianapolis Review: Visual Poetry Issue, and upcoming cover art for Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her artworks have been exhibited and won awards nationally. She lives in Seattle, where she is a featured artist at Four Corners Art.