A Majority of Sound

by Tom Sheehan

Silence comes
out of bullets
that rot in the Earth
or a bucket
of grenades
some meek hero
threw overboard
in the Leyte Gulf.

Silence is
a wet stone
without a carved name
taking storm knives
in a mile-wide
cemetery in
the Philippines
or bones
in a Kwajalein cave
coming up white as
good teeth
in a hard jaw.

Silence is
a big RBI some kid
drove home in Kansas
in ’41 and a father
remembers the ball
going like a bullet
into left center.

Silence is
a brother swimming
100 miles off
a New Zealand beach
saying your name,
through salt
in his teeth,
one last time.
###
Sheehan served in 31st Infantry, Korea 1951-52, and graduated Boston College, 1956. His books are Epic Cures; Brief Cases, Short Spans; A Collection of Friends; From the Quickening; The Saugus Book; Ah, Devon Unbowed; Reflections from Vinegar Hill; This Rare Earth & Other Flights; Vigilantes East; Korean Echoes (nominated, Distinguished Military Award); The Westering, (nominated, National Book Award); Murder at the Forum; Death of a Lottery Foe; Death by Punishment, and Vigilantes East. Published in 2014-15 were An Accountable Death, In the Garden of Long Shadows, The Nations, Where Skies Grow Wide, Cross Trails and Six Guns, Inc. He has multiple work in Ocean Magazine, Rosebud, Green Silk Journal, Linnet’s Wings, Serving House Journal, In Other Words-Merida, Copperfield Review, KYSO Flash,, Soundings East, Literally Stories, Literary Orphans, Indiana Voices Journal, Frontier Tales, Western Online Magazine, Provo Canyon Review, Rope & Wire Magazine, The Literary Yard, KYSO Journal, Fiction on the Web, The Path, Faith-Hope and Fiction etc. He has 30 Pushcart nominations, and five Best of the Net nominations (and one winner) and short story awards from Nazar Look for 2012- 2015. A chapbook, Swan River Daisy, is currently in publication process, and two short story collections have been accepted for publication.