There Is No Sound in Space

The larger universe prefers silence.
Our own planet a cacophony:
many birdwings sound like rain—or hard rain
sounds like so many birds taking flight
at once, just as a forest of evergreen
or one big pine, in the right wind, can sound
like the sea, or maybe it’s the sea
that sounds like wind in the trees.
Birdwing, rainstorm, wind,
industry, rhythm, voices, the breath
of my husband steadying his own hand,
says:  How can you love one person so much?
We have both given what most tell us
is too much. Wild swings at rescue,
salvation—begging a child to please
please come back to shore or, at least,
try to swim. My husband is learning
as I have learned
that you can only empty yourself
for so long. I want to tell him:
there is no sound in space.
But if there were we might hear wind
and wailing. I think of a desert.
The way loose sand can be picked up
and flung, the sting of it against my shins.
A wind with small teeth.

Rebecca Brock is the author of The Way Land Breaks (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023). Her work has been published in The Threepenny Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. Her awards include the 2025 Lascaux Poetry Prize and the 2022 Kelsay Book’s Woman’s Poetry Prize, among others. She is a reader for SWWIM. She is a MacDowell Fellow and holds an MFA from Bennington College. You can find more of her work at www.rebeccabrock.org.