When the Silence Invades

When the Silence Invades

(“’Comfort, comfort my people,’ says your God.” Isaiah 40:1)

When the silence invades your disquieted heart
find a place where words are weightier than
the solid rain that preoccupies your spaces of pain.
There is Spirit that speaks to the troubled fields where
chariots once charged. There is clear sky where the
clouds of thunder once erupted. There are donors of
friendship to open the ears deafened by muzzled
quiet withholding conversation.

You could read aloud, turn the volume higher.
You could strum the strings of so many spare
instruments lining your room. But something,
(a broken brick wall?) something keeps you from
standing to tune them, sitting to practice,
swaying as you play them. And the silence only
infiltrates your uneasy understanding.

There are songs I used to sing for days on end.
I would sing them to you if my voice hadn’t aged.
Some sound like cabernet,
some sound like whiskey,
some sound like babble,
some like unending rhymes.

There are phone numbers that I remember from
high school. No one lives there anymore, no one answers.
Nothing lasts forever, nothing sleeps all day.
Nothing hides unbidden, nothing knows the time.
Everything is within arm’s reach,
everything is sadder when the quiet is unrelentless.

The good news is, the Spirit whispers,
and keeps me company through the afternoon.
I’ll share the words, I’ll pour out my heart,
I’ll take some of the silence that has muted your day,
and turn it into words on a page, and turn it into
rosemary and sage.