Gary LeBel

The Song in the Whelk

 
It was a line from one of Cavafy’s poems that suddenly made her remember:

" ... with so many/conversations piled high inside him."

Though very shy then, but a shyness others more discerning might call a “reticence” steeped in observation, there was no “suffering in silence”, no impatience or brooding, no pent-up resentment to unleash on the chattering, dismissive herd, no scathing glances in her clear, objective eyes,

              for she had only to release them in her own way,

                     the flood of words that had amassed in her mind, floor to ceiling,
              words giving names to noumenal things, to ironies strange and bitter, to  breathtakingly beautiful things, things allusive, bold, nebulous, mercurial, all that she was learning to command with her own voice,

             for as in the sea’s most private whisper, the song in the whelk, the words had always been there from the beginning: no one but her had been listening, but now they would,

              as long as they asked the right questions.

               Bought for a song
in a thrift store downtown,
              her new best friend,
Thesaurus

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About the Author

Gary LeBel is an artist-poet living in the greater Atlanta area whose poems have appeared in journals throughout the USA, the UK, Japan, and India. He believes that art, or anything else worth doing, is a life-long pilgrimage. 

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