What fear stops us speaking?

Extract from 'Street passing'

Why did you look at me like that
Dark girl I passed in the wet street?
Was it the faintest of mockery
Returning my glance, or barely perceptible
Wrinkle of friendliness I saw
Never now discoverable?


While we often speak when silence would be better, sometimes we don't speak when we should.

In Street passing the writer passes a girl in the street. Some communication of faces occurs which is ambiguous and not followed up. What fear of what might happen stops us speaking when speaking would bring clarity?

Things linger in the mind that could so easily have been turned into day-lit certainty, one way or the other, and we might then move on. One wants to be the poet but change the script, yet we've been there and not done exactly the same thing.

The poem's setting is a wet street, which seems somehow appropriate.

And if we didn't have these painful uncertainties, maybe there would be fewer beautiful poems.

David Henschel's Heres and Nows: Poems From A Life. is now available on Amazon.