Ken Poyner
HIDDEN SILENCE
You need to be careful when you teach the stones to sing. Townspeople do not particularly like it. Situations can get quite rough. You, standing there shirtless, hands conspiratorially outstretched, a warren of local stones scattered about. The air flat of dust, with a hum that straightens the hair on your back. Slowly, slowly as they learn, the stones joyfully emitting. You. You ceding just a bare private of power, the stones imagining themselves liquid crystal. Soon, the stones grow to understand their own abilities when alone, without you. They begin to wander the scale, shudder their best tones. You sway parenthetically, teaching them to follow your arms, the tilt of your head. Then the stones discover there is more to music than one stone singing. They fathom which stone voices pair best together, which highs better vein which lows. The song begins to run, to spill across the land. And then: the townspeople, hearing. Townspeople prefer their miracles untethered, broad and closely owned. Yet, some understand. At some towns there is celebration, tin cymbals, and dancing, even curiosity. But for most towns it is pushing and shoving and stones screaming as they are tossed. You move on, sometimes broken, sometimes simply shamed. Sometimes elevated and enriched and paroled. You move on. But even in their covering silence, the stones know singing. The notes cannot be undone. In the dark where there should be only dust, there will be a pirating music.
Ken Poyner’s four collections of brief fictions and four collections of speculative poetry can be found at most online booksellers. He spent 33 years in information system management, is married to a world record holding female power lifter, and has a family of several cats and betta fish. Individual works have appeared in Café Irreal, Analog, Danse Macabre, The Cincinnati Review, and several hundred other places.
HIDDEN SILENCE
You need to be careful when you teach the stones to sing. Townspeople do not particularly like it. Situations can get quite rough. You, standing there shirtless, hands conspiratorially outstretched, a warren of local stones scattered about. The air flat of dust, with a hum that straightens the hair on your back. Slowly, slowly as they learn, the stones joyfully emitting. You. You ceding just a bare private of power, the stones imagining themselves liquid crystal. Soon, the stones grow to understand their own abilities when alone, without you. They begin to wander the scale, shudder their best tones. You sway parenthetically, teaching them to follow your arms, the tilt of your head. Then the stones discover there is more to music than one stone singing. They fathom which stone voices pair best together, which highs better vein which lows. The song begins to run, to spill across the land. And then: the townspeople, hearing. Townspeople prefer their miracles untethered, broad and closely owned. Yet, some understand. At some towns there is celebration, tin cymbals, and dancing, even curiosity. But for most towns it is pushing and shoving and stones screaming as they are tossed. You move on, sometimes broken, sometimes simply shamed. Sometimes elevated and enriched and paroled. You move on. But even in their covering silence, the stones know singing. The notes cannot be undone. In the dark where there should be only dust, there will be a pirating music.
Ken Poyner’s four collections of brief fictions and four collections of speculative poetry can be found at most online booksellers. He spent 33 years in information system management, is married to a world record holding female power lifter, and has a family of several cats and betta fish. Individual works have appeared in Café Irreal, Analog, Danse Macabre, The Cincinnati Review, and several hundred other places.
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