Hearing Is The Last To Go

July 18 2016

Hearing is the last to go.

The rattle of dishes

from the modest kitchen

down the hall,

the being present

the busying themselves.

The voice of the man

who fell for her

decades ago,

off in the murk

of peripheral vision

squeezing her hand.

The faint rattle

of the last breath

through dry cracked lips.

Then the long sigh

of expiration

as she finally comes to rest;

lungs slackening

chest at ease.

It starts this way, as well,

muffled by fluid, diffused by flesh;

the beating heart

the world out there.

Smell is subtle, taste too blunt, touch goes numb.

And vision, interrupted

around, behind.

While sound jumps,

frozen, frightened

startled flight.

Like running into his arms;

the voice, in the hubbub

she recognized.

Warm breath, wet lips

directly into her ear,

5 o’clock stubble

against her skin.

The speed of sound;

so ravishingly quick

so unerringly clear.

I was reading a New Yorker piece about  hospice nurse who does home care. This line jumped out at me like a found poem:  “Hearing is the last to go.”

And even if it’s not, hearing is still the most powerful sense:  the primordial and most essential; the medium of language and the means of survival.

I’m pretty sure I’ve written this poem before, but haven’t bothered to go through the archives to unearth it. Although even if  it has been written, it’s always  worth another go. Maybe this time, I’ve gotten closer to making it work. 

I’m partial to the semi-colon, that scorned orphan of punctuation. I probably let myself get carried away in this piece. But the reason it’s so useful in poetry is because poems are written to be read out loud:  that is, recited at the speed of the human voice. So punctuation becomes a road map, telling the speaker where to pause, and for just how long. The semi-colon does this beautifully, sitting strategically between the comma’s brief pause and the period’s full stop.