By Kay Ryan
Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark’s-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.
Kay Ryan, "Sharks’ Teeth" from The Niagara River. Copyright © 2005 by Kay Ryan. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be cleared with Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Source: Poetry
Poet Bio
Born in California, Kay Ryan is the author of several books of poetry. Her unique brand of tightly compressed brilliance has earned her the status of one of the great living American poets, and led to her appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate in 2008. Maintaining a career outside the mainstream poetry circuit, Ryan teaches remedial English in California’s Marin County, where she has lived for the last 30 years. Ryan has said that her poems do not start with imagery or sound, but rather develop “the way an oyster does, with an aggravation.”
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