American Life in Poetry: “Enough Music” by Dorianne Laux

Sun., Feb. 21, 2016

Ted Kooser U.S. poet laureate, 2004-06

After my mother died, her best friend told me that they were so close that they could sit together in a room for an hour and neither felt she had to say a word. Here’s a fine poem by Dorianne Laux, about that kind of silence. Her most recent book is “The Book of Men” (W.W. Norton & Co., 2012) and she lives in North Carolina.

Enough Music

Sometimes, when we’re on a long drive,

and we’ve talked enough and listened

to enough music and stopped twice,

once to eat, once to see the view,

we fall into this rhythm of silence.

It swings back and forth between us

like a rope over a lake.

Maybe it’s what we don’t say

that saves us.

Poem copyright 1994 by Dorianne Laux, from “What We Carry,” (BOA Editions, 1994), and reprinted by permission of the author and publisher. American Life in Poetry is supported by the Poetry Foundation and the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited submissions.