It's so quiet it's almost frightening; in the tawny biscuit color of evening, great green

leaf clusters lean in at us, a windchime across the street speaks up

a blue scale and down. A child goes by on a bicycle, whizzing. Then two students

in sneakers, nudging each other.

But here we are nearly immobile. Huge mattresses of silence slide out under our bodies

and lift us, and float across the lawn as if we'd been hollowed out, drawn

into thin filaments of ourselves, vague faces listening

like automatic antennae quivering . . .

At nine o'clock, ten o'clock, it's still bright and suddenly menacing: a fast car

suddenly whisks by

as Sentinel Hill looks down over its shoulders at the shadows beginning to slip

between houses: in the mild lion light of summer

on porches all over town

the people next door pop in and out unexpectedly, they run errands

all day long but now nothing, after a quick

juicy giggle, the slow dying-away fall of a low voice on the corner, some stranger

saying good night, the quietness spreads out everywhere, when everyone disappears

in summer, after work where do they go?

Sitting quietly on their porches

or asleep, no longer present any more than the leaves bowing

and nodding absently to each other,

for all the brain's endless intercellular whisperings,

strands of protein rustling and waving back and forth like wheat,

the mind in its windy armchair murmuring barely believes in itself:

as slow water drops from the dark lavender petunias

in their K-Mart pots above us,

high overhead, in the black backyards of space, cerebral circuits flash

and babble to themselves, lonely

as far-off satellites, blind sparks blinking, signaling across the night

She begins, and my grandmother joins her. Mother and daughter sing like young girls. If my father were alive, he would play his accordion and sway like a boat.

I've never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace, nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers running away in the grass.

But I love to hear it sung; how the waterlilies fill with rain until they overturn, spilling water into water, then rock back, and fill with more.

Both women have begun to cry. But neither stops her song.

You are in love for the first time. You are twelve. Next to you is a deaf girl, maybe ten years old. The two of you are on a train easing its way through the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. You are so sure of this girl you tell her everything. How you voice is changing its shape. How you are becoming something remarkable. She smiles at you, touches your arm. Later on, in a darkening of the trees she sleeps on your shoulder. Gives to you the soft whispers of her breath. When she wakes up, you realize you are over thirty years old. The young girl says words to you that seem out of shape, far away. Then she starts talking to you with her hands. You begin to understand the makings of her language¡ªwhere rain becomes a drizzle of fingers and where, soon, if will be a heavy enough rain that she will show you how to make rivers with your hands, your thumbs anchors against the long, wild rush of water.