When Silence Speaks

Does silence speak?

Does she command your attention.

Does she demand of you, "Listen, if you want to be heard."

And yet we cannot deny that she has a voice.

A voice singing all day, longing for some attentive listener,

That poignant voice, untouched, unfazed, 

That has wept, chuckled, smiled,

In such angelic solitude as not to be solicited by all,

A voice so rare, it escapes notice,

Except to be called, 

The Sound of Silence.

A voice that belongs to an earnest chatterbox,

Which is so alien to us that it does not elicit attention.

A voice that can carry us to distant places,

Distant by means but not by fancy,
Can we fish out our gadgets and tune into her frequency?
Can we train ourselves to discover what may surface once
We have cajoled that godly modesty?

Yes, it's possible, but what can she have to say?
What is it one feels when silence speaks?
What is it one hears when she beckons?
What is it one has to don to hear her?
Her voice is unworldly, intangible, so divine,
That no wickedly engineered device can venture
To derive utility from it, to castle up its energy.
That is why her purity is indisputable, her divinity
Unquestionable, for what silence holds, cannot be corrupted.
What she breathes, is the listener's elixir.

When silence speaks,
She speaks of thought, discretion, perusal,
Secrecy, concern, empathy and sensitivity.

She speaks, sometimes, of mania and dishonesty,
But she feels so wretched in so doing, that we feel,
A strained, fatigued, morose kind of silence.

And so silence speaks, through her nature,
The truth; or something very near it.
While you reckon, "How mercenary can be the musings,
Of so divine a spirit, honest a spirit, generous a spirit."
Consider that she is divine in bringing to notice all
That is deemed too worldly to be worthy of mention.
Yes, her unworldliness lies in allowing the worldliness to surface,
She instructs, "Take your buoys and dredge the ocean,
For the ecosystem that keeps it alive and flowing.
Transport yourselves to the things that were said,
And those that were entrusted to me, once they have warmed up to you,
Will emerge afloat from inscrutable undercurrents."

When silence speaks,
She says that someone has entrusted a lot to her out of wisdom,
And not ignorance, indifference, insolence, diffidence.
She recounts that someone has made her the confidante
Of another's feelings as well as their own,
So that words may not deliver blows that she can't cure.
She discerns that someone's life was at stake,
And thus life-threatening intelligence has been entrusted to her,
For safekeeping.
She sings in praise of wise people who have befriended her,
And left in her the keys for others to uncover their wisdom.
She frolics in glee of her great vocabulary, her tremendous knowledge,
And is all willing to impart it with the perceptive, those
Who value her words and lend her their own.

And as for those who haven't yet unleashed,
The secret door to her loquaciousness,
She can only say, "You are my greatest benefactors,
For through you I hear the said, the spent, often wasted,
Words claiming, 'Speech is interesting, delightful, a gift.
Those who say little, are little liked and little to be trusted.'
You can't hear me, but I can hear you,
And so I hope some telepathy may convey to you,
What you may be losing by berating victors thus,
For your own sake."

And this is what, as I have heard word to word,
Silence says.