John Hicks

Night Stillness

Bangkok, Rainy Season

Silence in its silver light pours across my garden wall
through this monsoon break—a cloud-feathered frame
of moonlight tipping jasmine and hibiscus, airy sprays of orchids

spilling flower to flower into shadowpool.
Moon-filled potholes path the street with footlights
drawing me into the lane I came to live in hot season.

Stillness drying on the pavement loosens sounds I’ve never seen.
Behind a slatted wooden fence, small frogs chirp a lily pond,
and as I pass it, a khamoi bird cries its warning in two voices.

John Hicks has been published or accepted for publication by:  Valparaiso Poetry Review, I-70 Review, First Literary Review – East, Panorama, San Pedro River Review, Mohave River Review, Cold Creek Review, Glint, and others.  He completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska – Omaha in 2016.  He writes in the thin air of northern New Mexico.