This is the third evening I have lived in a hush.
A thousand others like me know the feel of warm hush.

The student in the library, snug in her work;
She’s caught up in her work and the scribbling hush.

A sporting man, dressed in white, at the courts of Central Park—
Tennis courts, one next to the other, he knocks echoes into the hush.

The woman singing jazz at some bar, swaying, drunk.
Her audience of three blinks like a dumb hush.

A man at a deli sits, hunched behind the counter;
Morning light slips through his cigarette smoke: white hush.

At 4 am, two train lights appear down the track—
Tungsten lights add a brightening hush.

And I sit by the wall in the hospital’s small waiting room.
There is no one in the hall, no one in the chairs, only me and the hush.