Hadley Hury keeps busy in Tennessee. His suspense novel The Edge of the Gulf was published in 2003 and his collection of short stories It’s Not the Heat was published in 2007. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in Image, Colorado North, Grapevine, and Green Mountains Review.
He is college counselor and chair of the English Department at
Hutchison School in Memphis. This tribute poem does something truly
remarkable: it takes the words away from the writer, like kicking away
crutches, and allows space and peace to give voice to feeling. Read it
twice to see how Hadley brings the reader into the affectionate joke
though; it takes a lot of words to clear one’s head of words, doesn’t
it? 
Tenth Anniversary Poem, for a Writer’s Wife
By Hadley Hury
My head has always been
so full of words
that I have learned to pay close attention
whenever I sense the absence of them–
whenever I suddenly become aware that a rare hush
has perched inside me
and is gently shifting its immaculate white wings,
and settling its plump round cooing bosom
into that hollow where the words
have ceased, for a moment, to swarm.
It is the wonder of that absence, that hush–
not the cumulative force,
the weighing, the sorting or choice,
the delighting or portentous patterns,
the searching,
of all those words–
that defines,
as perhaps one snowflake might
come nearer to doing,
what you are to me:
the quiet thrill of perfect peace,
of home
beyond explaining.
What a wonderful love poem. I love the sound and the force of this one.
Hey, that was interesting,
This is a great poem,
Thanks for writing about it