Noiseless Sky
by James Piatt

In the noiseless sky, 
blue as a sapphire’s facets,  
nowhere is there 
the metallic thunder of planes 
slicing through scudding clouds 
of gray, 

The faint echoes 
of autos  
that once were groaning 
like metallic turtles
as they crept along highways 
in the far distance, 
now almost silent. 
The days are left with a
melancholy suspended 
in time and space, and

in empty streets, 
only minute traces 
are seen of the hordes that once 
visited shops, and cafes;
the businesses 
now closed, that are  
waiting 
for a safe morning 
to thrive again,
 
nothing seems to make sense anymore
to those used to instant gratification 
in a past era of excess Hedonism 
where buying was cherished, 

The empty city’s landscape, 
stark, lonely,
wide avenues once filled with cars, 
now only ambulances carrying 
the almost dead, 
speeding to a hospital 
filled with ventilators, 
can be heard 
in the eeriness of the void 
by the infrequent human walking down 
the sidewalk, 
wearing a mask, 
and wondering 
where did his world go, 

Above his head, 
dark clouds 
holding cold drops of moisture 
hang listlessly in the noiseless sky, 
sky where echoes of mumbled words 
were once sent upwards
from wooden pews in the nave 
of a church, 
a church where old bronze bells 
once 
signaled morning mass… 
but no more.

---

James Piatt, a poet and writer from Santa Ynez, California, is a Best of Web nominee and three time Pushcart nominee. He has had poems published by Backchannels, Front Porch Review, Page & Spine, Miller's Pond, American Aesthetic, TreeHouse, El Portal, The Seventh Quarry, Poetry Magazine.com, Dagda, and hundreds of others. His fifth collection of poetry Serenity, will be released this month. He earned his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO, and his doctorate from BYU.