Poem: The Sound Behind Silence

Jan 07, 2008 - 21:22 PM PST

The Sound Behind Silence
(This is only a draft!)

You can’t hear it in the silence
Did no one tell you silence has no noise?
I wanted to believe you
I wanted to hear it to
But alas, it is silence.

I stayed up for days
I begged God I would hear it
Is it that he never came through?
Let me hear just this one sound.

I locked myself away
In a room with no noise
No kids yelling, no dogs barking
So I could hear the quietest little sound
But still, nothing.

I sat on my roof, sat there for days
Sunset and sunrise, I sat there and gazed
Needing to hear that one tiny sound
Yet it never came.

I screamed and I yelled
And I blamed only myself
Silence is silence
There’s just nothing else
Until I forgot what I’d wanted
Did that one smallish note come.

A pling, or a pluck, or a hum
Or a chime
I can’t quite be sure
(Why am I speaking in rhyme?)
Indescribable, indefinable
And it’s nothing else
The sound behind silence
Now listen for yourself.