The active listening of Deaf people

in their signed conversations

with each other, if you’ve ever

seen them—beautiful, flitting,

leaping—communication as communion,

the almost-genuflecting heads

nodding their affirmations,

their agreements, their understandings,

the backchanneling, the feedback,

the empathic finger-flicked HOW-AWFUL,

the bobbing OH-I-SEE,

incredulous TRUE-BIZ?

in-the-face WOW! the approving

and allowing and concurring

RIGHT-RIGHT and YES-YES

and THAT-THAT-THAT—

all that grammar of the face, its tenses,

its anima, the thousand outpouring faces

of Deaf people listening to each other’s

gab, palaver, repartee, the found

poems, the stories, jokes and autobiographies

in a language with its own music—

rhythms, assonances, crescendos

and descrescendos, riffs and repetitions—

all the sections of the body’s orchestra—

hands, face, eyebrows, eye-gaze,

lips, tongue, head-tilt, shoulder-turn—

creating meaning simultaneously—voila—

a visual-gestural symphony for the eyes.