Newsletter sign up

Be the first to know when new American Life in Poetry columns are live.

Column 569

Enough Music

Intro by Ted Kooser
02.14.2016

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.

Share this column

Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©1994 by Dorianne Laux, “Enough Music,” (What We Carry, BOA Editions, 1994). Poem reprinted by permission of Dorianne Laux and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.