UTTER SILENCE

On a narrow dirt road alongside a vast corn field, I experienced total silence, utter silence, for the first time.  I was on that road by myself, an old guy ambling along, minus a friend who had accompanied me who was now nowhere to be seen.  We had agreed to explore this place separately, as not to distract each other, and so evidently we were doing.

A short green fly darted over from the tall green stalks, and, as if it knew where it was going, headed straight for my head.  Its sudden loud passing by me caused me to stumble, even as its departure left an even denser lack of sound.  I myself was not there anymore, was how it felt to me, as though the fly had taken me with it.

I would never experience such a thing, such a silence again I knew, only approximations of it, even if I returned to this same spot.  I did not want to leave there because of it.  And so I didn’t.