[3/13/22] Finally another new poem, this one inspired by the quotation Tom Clausen posted this morning, quoting Michael Finkel about silence being “another world altogether.” My heart is constantly breaking for the horrors of Ukraine, and I haven’t been able to write about that. This is a start. __________________
The Door of Silence
Sometimes we need to turn off the television, stop listening to voices of doom, and cease staring at the horizon of the end of life as we know it.
Instead, we must remember the path that leads us to the blessed door of silence, the one we can choose to walk through and find peace, find rest from the horrific
reports battering us, breaking our hearts. And we must sit there for a while, listening to another world—one where soft winds still whisper in the treetops and tall grasses,
one where burgeoning birdsongs fall like manna, slowing the frantic rhythm of our daily breath. Then, when we choose to walk back through that door into what we so often call
the only real, we must nurture that silence in spirit , a retreat for when this world is too much with us, a house of calm we can share with others who may also need to rest a while
before opening their hearts again to the constant breaking news that delivers unthinkable acts of cruelty, the witness of which can bury the songs we need to find within us to go on.
[© 2022, Penny Harter]
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