“The Meeting Room, Shaker Village” by Kristine Nowak

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If sound echoes, then it must echo forever—
softer with each iteration, the more delicate
the ear needed to catch it.

In every place where there was
singing and dancing and stomping
there must be some faint

reverberation
that gets closer to silence,
but never reaches it.

The room where they sang
is all clean benches now,
a great stage of empty

and gleaming floor,
windows that cast rivers of sun
across the barren wood.

I could swear
there is nothing here—
not even ghosts.

But, somewhere under this veneer
of silence, there must be dozens
of voices pounding to song,

there must be heavy footfalls
that shake these same windows.
There must be more

than these lone lines of light
and shadow tracking time
across the floor.

-Kristine Nowak

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