Going
Deaf
by
Mary M. Brown
For
a while it’s mostly bliss,
swimming
a lovely, negotiable
lake,
the hush of small fish,
or
like resting inside a shell,
a
turtle, a nutmeat, a swaddled
babe,
pacified and riding
the
sweet blurry line between
stillness
and sleep. But later
you
wonder whether the lake
is
a roiling ocean you are
alone
in with sharks, other
predators,
and water pressure
or
a kind of padded cell, you
the
slow prisoner who wonders
if
anyone else will show up
to
bring you poetry or mass or
whatever
you yearn for—a bible,
cigarettes,
kisses, a knife in a cake.
About
the poet: Mary
M. Brown lives with her husband, Bill, in Anderson, Indiana. She’s a
Hoosier not by birth but by long residence and disposition, and she
enjoys proximity to all six of her grandchildren. Retired now, she
taught literature and creative writing at Indiana Wesleyan for many
years. Her work appears on the Poetry Foundation and the American
Life in Poetry websites and has been published recently in Christian
Century, The Cresset, Quiddity, Flying Island, and Justice Journal.