Silences

Silences
Lee Warner Brooks

Lawyers learn to listen to what wasn’t
said—as well as how to not‑say what
should not be said; a ready wit that doesn’t
aid your case is best kept quiet. But

this cannot mean a colloquy of lawyers
can be silent—we by nature speak
incessantly—because as legal warriors
whose sole weapon is the word, we seek

to quiet silences that might sustain
an inconvenient fact or contradiction—
so we speak—but, speaking, we refrain
from any sound that could give rise to friction

with our theory of the case—our way
of saying what we’re careful not to say.

_____

From James R. Elkins, Lawyer Poets and That World We Call Law: An Anthology of Poems about the Practice of Law (2013).