I’ve gotten to the age at which I am starting to strain to hear things, but I am glad to have gotten to that age, all the same. Here’s a fine poem by Miller Williams of Arkansas that gets inside a person who is losing her hearing.

Going Deaf

No matter how she tilts her head to hear

she sees the irritation in their eyes.

She knows how they can read a small rejection,

a little judgment, in every What did you say?

So now she doesn’t say What? or Come again?

She lets the syllables settle, hoping they form

some sort of shape that she might recognize.

When they don’t, she smiles with everyone else,

and then whoever was talking turns to her

and says, “Break wooden coffee, don’t you know?”

She pulls all she can focus into the face

to know if she ought to nod or shake her head.

In that long space her brain talks to itself.

The person may turn away as an act of mercy,

leaving her there in a room full of understanding

with nothing to cover her, neither sound nor silence.