Listening to My Parents from the Ventilator Shaft

Before sleep I overhear them, 
their scrabble of words 
scattered to draw meaning 
from a day with eight kids, 
their voices like bowls 
that hold experience 
until they can name 
what happens and relive it. 

What they say, what they mean— 
the silence in between the two— 
surprises, alerts, and softens me. 
How deep the well of concern 
from which they fumble words. 
How one thought followed 
leads a circuitous route 
that ends up in city traffic 
far from our secluded farm. 
How he says she says 
becomes a ball tossed 
back and forth to a rhythm 
I can fall asleep to. 

It’s here, through the shaft 
below my bed, words 
rising like starlings 
from the underground, 
where I first guess 
their conjugal feeling, sounds 
and tones expressing more 
than can be said 
in soporific backdrop. 
It’s here I learn to love language, 
here the germination: 
the said, 
the unsaid, 
the nevertalkedof, 
the breath.