For certain subjects the least intrusiveness of poetic flourish is crucial. And so here, in a sparseness that is reminiscent of Robert Frost, or more accurately William Carlos Williams, Tom Fallon gives us the profound isolation of an old man living alone and the cost of losing social engagement. Even the kindness of his neighbor can’t undo the weight of an isolation that exhausts him and robs him of an inner life. Finally, the silence of his aloneness and the silence of death seem to merge.
Tom Fallon has written from off the grid in the small town of Rumford. His “Pregnant Man 1” was published by Red Dust of NYC, with A Dying Animal, a dramatic trilogy, staged in Boston by ATMA Theatre, and he has been published in Maine Speaks, An Anthology of Maine Literature, often presented in the Puckerbrush Review and other university literary quarterlies, as well as his publication of Through A Stranger’s Eyes and NOW. He is also known for his experiment with literary form.
Betsy Sholl, MAJ Editor
The Silence
1.
The house was quiet.
The old man sat alone
in his rocking chair.
He was alone because
of the virus.
He heard a knock on
the front door.
The old man didn’t move.
He was tired.
“Wake up, Harry. It’s me.
Got something for you.”
He smiled. Louise, his
neighbor next door.
He did not answer her
and he did not move.
He was tired.
The old man slept in his
rocking chair.
When he woke he shuffled
slowly to the front door.
On the porch was a bag.
Louise’s soup, he knew.
Every week she brought him
a different kind of soup.
The old man shuffled slowly
back to his rocking chair.
He held the soup in his lap.
Tears formed in his eyes.
2.
The house was quiet.
The old man sat
in the rocking chair.
He was alone.
A knock came on
the front door.
The old man didn’t move.
“Wake up, Harry. It’s me.
Got something for you.”
He did not answer her
and he did not move.
April 2020
Image at top: Tom Paiement, Portrait 30, oil pastel and pencil, 9 ½ x 9 ½ in., 2019.