There Is Something

There is something that lingers in the absence,
in the emptiness between moments: a heaviness of silence.

So, we shuffle the mundane around, hoping the white noise
will drown out that cosmic sigh, the faint hum of angst,

which, like the fine silt in water while barely sensed,
is, by its mere presence, unsettling.

And all the while consciousness desperately deceives
to convince that we are not the fragments of fragments,
but are, in fact, whole.

And yet, there are the shadows, which, while resonating
to a dark rhythm, take refuge behind our retinas.

But behold the poppies on the rocky hillsides joyously
bleeding their joie de vivre: oblivious or simply defiant?