A drum nobody strikes, in a poem whose title claims otherwise.

Rain hits the earth and makes a sound. Snow does not. An instrument built on falling snow therefore has no percussion in it whatsoever, and Plahm knows this and writes it down anyway: when that drumbeat falls without a sound. The contradiction is the point. A rhythm exists, the beat is real and regular, and nothing can be heard. What supplies the missing sound is the listener. My heartbeat slows to match its falling. The drum stays silent and the body keeps time on its behalf.

Ten days earlier a companion poem ran the identical frame with rain in it. Setting the two side by side is the most useful thing a reader can do with either, because nearly every substitution moves the same direction.

Rain had a mallet striking the earth. Snow has a drift settling on it. A mallet strikes and a drift does not, so the second poem surrendered the mechanism that made the first one legible and bought a paradox worth considerably more.

The earlier poem slowed the mind to one clear pulse. This one slows a heartbeat to match a falling. Abstract becomes physical, and entrainment replaces simple slowing, which is a more accurate account of what quiet actually does to a body. The same detail turned up a month before in a poem about purring, where a heart slowed inside somebody’s arms.

Rain spoke only for us. Snow leans close and speaks only one name. Us is plural and general and any reader can climb inside it. One name is singular, specific, and withheld. The reader watches the most intimate gesture available, somebody leaning in to say a name, and is not permitted to hear which name it is.

The endings separate them completely. The earlier poem closed on the world thinning to silence, only you, which states a feeling. This one closes on breath melting frost from a window, opening a clear patch, and through that patch he sees her. Breath on cold glass genuinely does this. The seeing gets caused rather than declared.

Watch the breath while it moves. Snow settles like a held breath in the first movement, and a whisper’s breath melts the frost in the last. The poem inhales at the beginning and exhales at the end, and what it exhales is her name.

What carries over from the earlier poem carries over deliberately. Place me in the wild. An instrument no hands have ever held. Its touch folds the day’s noise. A voice that belongs to everything. These are companion pieces and the shared architecture is the link between them, though anyone meeting both will notice that a voice belonging to everything was broad the first time and stays broad here. The opening is inherited too, and it was the weaker part of the original. Place me in the wild, listening only to the quiet, is a stiff way into a poem that turns supple almost immediately afterward.

The better of the two drum poems, and the comparison is instructive because almost every change moves in one direction. A mallet striking the earth becomes a drift settling on it, which gives up the mechanism that made the first poem legible and buys a paradox worth more, since a drum falling without sound still keeps time and the listener’s own heartbeat supplies what is missing. Speaks only for us becomes speaks only one name, trading a plural any reader can occupy for a singular the reader is not allowed to hear. The endings separate them furthest. One states that the world thins to silence. This one has breath melt frost from a window and open a patch to see her through, a physical event rather than a declared feeling. The breath structure holds the whole thing together, held at the start and released at the finish. What keeps it from higher is inherited: a stiff opening, and a voice that belongs to everything which was broad in the earlier poem and remains broad here.