Eddie

April 16, Napowrimo 2026. Today’s prompt involved writing a poem in which we describe something that cannot speak, and what it has taught or told us.

I remember being chastised at school once for simultaneous insolence and dumb insolence. I learnt a lot from that, but I suspect it was not what the Deputy Head had in mind at the time.

Anyhoo, speaking of dumb people, let me introduce you to Eddie.

Sometimes, when she’s
Teetering on the precipice of depletion,
Too spent to rewind,
Too fixed to fast forward,
The viscous sludge of her vibrant once,
Sieving through the pores of her feet,
Oozing between her clamped toes and
Out through her sandal shoes,
Slopping down the cliff face of despair,
As barely warm chocolate ripples and
Slips down the edge of a cake,
Toward the oil slick of her
Former lives, where
Drowned birds of ambition, harpooned hope and
Suffocated dream fish with bulging eyes
Bloat just below the surface.

At times like these,
He just;
Smiles.

He has no capacity for loquacious conversation.

And yet,

He speaks to her in calming chords of Antarctic whale song, and reassures her with
The tremulous diamond-mine-deep sub-bass patois of silent elephants that rumbles under African savannah.
He whispers the warm words of Tibetan silk-soft chimes, in sentences only she can hear.

His concrete face,
Softened by nature’s green foundation,
Warmed by winter’s white icing,
Unfixes her feet with its smile.

This unrelenting, unconditional Moai of her spirit,
This guardian against the grating, tawdry disciplines of life,
This mute mystery of her garden salvation,

He knows.

He knows she will.
He knows she can.

And in his concrete wisdom,
And in his smiling words,
She finds peace.