Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark’s-tooth-
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.

– Sharks’ Teeth, by Kay Ryan.

Ryan was last years U.S. Poet Laureate, and just announced as the winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her spare, fiercely precise poems are breathtakingly powerful, shining bright light on worn surfaces. More on her work here, in an old post.