It is difficult for me to hear them,
but I know that church bells chime
in a distant town. They faintly mime
the bell my great grandmother
shook at her death bed.
It had a terrible, tiny sound, its tongue
chinking against porcelain,
like something small breaking.
From everywhere in the house
I could hear it,
weak and frequent
and shrill.
My mind still tangles the peal
of a bell and her
incessant need ringing
like a caged cricket
with its last song
harrowing the air.
Silence was never so attractive
as it was to me at three, the stillness
settled in that dusty bell.
I would stare and stare,
as, in a belfry, some
can eye the long fraying ropes
that slip their weight evenly
in the tall dark tower
up and then down,
and hear nothing.