What Does the Silence Say?

 

What does the silence say,
in the early morning, just before dawn,
Christmas lights winking in the window,
and in the tall tree across the street?
What is it saying before you turn on the news
and are bombarded with tornadoes, hurricanes,
the rebuilding of roads and towns after flood?

Does it sit in your heart like a small canary,
trying to convince we miners that our world
is still safe? These past months have taught us,
if nothing else, that at any instant, the ground can 
sweep us away to another place
where we own only the clothes on our backs.

We have entered the country of no control,
 our roads and bridges and buildings flattened.
We climb out of our shattered houses
in shock. Crisis does not honour borders;
we are more vulnerable than we ever knew.
We are like all the other global climate refugees, now.

Once again, it is Christmas, once a time of excess,
in those old ignorant days when we thought
we could purchase some happiness for others.
Now one looks at each item, calculating:
how much wrap, how much plastic,
how much waste - more Things
we don't need. Our gifts grow small and useful,
or not at all. So sad that, after gathering things
all one's life, then downsizing, once, twice, three times,
and giving it all away: what a lot of energy
was spent in the gathering and the letting go.

The silence lives in me; I become the Observer,
a Listener to what it has to teach me,
watching the day unfold with whatever it brings:
sometimes a skiff of snow along the beach,
sometimes the breathtaking morning sky,
sometimes feathered beings, with wings.

Inspired by What the Silence Said by Marie Howe.