Bio-graph

The mind is rustling
clothes, sound shadows
and deadening echoes. 

The feel of her proximity
and the wall when a blind
man is walking too close. 

Like black panthers, all of us
find our way by vibrations, 
when the night gets too dark.

And in the morning, the mind is
a patch of parsley green moss on
the white flesh of birch trees. 

The ones my daughter plays peekaboo
behind. And the reason elephants console
each other, and the universe is so cold

and silent. Empty in the silence. 
A mirror grasping for nothing, reflecting
but never holding.

George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Havana Times, South China Morning Post, The Buffalo News, and more. 

See all his poems on Tea House here.

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