To Athena

I wonder how you pass through days, how picture pretty flowers,
what spirit winds in your mind's ways as you breathe away the hours?
What thoughts entangled by brown hair and locked by matching eyes,
just how do you perceive this world that all around you lies?

To wish to know that mind of yours, to feel its flowing beat,
to wonder how you feel your arms and how you guide your feet,
to find the you that makes you you, and trace obscure its ways...
now there's a task to keep a poet busy all his days!

You sit in stalwart silence and so make yourself a riddle,
and yet what whispers come my way as I play at my fiddle?
I noticed once, and dearly pray that my saying be allowed,
that a certain sort of silence beats the eardrums very loud.

Now I could take a guess or two at what your silence means,
but then again I'll never know just what's behind the scenes.
Perhaps it's best I do not know, that I may not repent
or find this silken silence was but your experiment.

I must confess this silence yet does give me some surprise,
for hesitancy never seemed to lurk behind your eyes.
Perhaps you are not really there, although you seem so real,
and I speak all to nothing while the time turns at its wheel...