Download PDF Here Live Encounters Poetry & Writing October 2022.
Silence at the station, poem by Wendy J. Dunn.
Silence at the station
Silence at the station
if silence can be called
(Or if it exists at all).
The ebb and flow
of traffic noise
the frantic chirping
of a bird
(surely not nesting in winter?)
Outside the fence line
in the laneway
a toddler’s piping voice
intercepts
(I think)
its mother’s persuasion
On the platform
footfalls of
impatience
determination
busy lives
self-important lives
no one speaks
Silence at the station
If it exists
At all.
© Wendy J Dunn
Wendy J. Dunn is an award-winning Australian author, playwright and poet. Her first Tudor novels were two Anne Boleyn novels: Dear Heart, How Like You This? and The Light in the Labyrinth. Wendy’s most recent publications are two novels inspired by the life of Katherine of Aragon: her Falling Pomegranate Seeds duology: The Duty of Daughters (a finalist in the 2020 Chaucer award) and All Manner of Things (2021), Silver Medallist in the 2021 international Readers’ Favorite Award for historical personage, Silver Medallist in The Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year Award (Tudor and Stuart category), a finalist in the 2022 Eric Hoffer Award and a first place win for Tudor fiction in the international 2021 Chaucer Award. Wendy tutors in writing at the Swinburne University of Technology. She’s currently writing a novel set in 2010. Of course, it includes a Tudor story. She is also writing her first full length Tudor biography, commissioned by Pen and Sword.