Spirit of Silence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

I put my faith in nature long ago. Yes, nature has its dark side but isn't that true of most if not all things?

If I personally cannot believe in a personified God , I respect other people's Belief. When I am quiet and reflective, nature speaks to me. I guess it is the same for a religious person when they pray. Nature, God...these are one and the same thing perhaps? Who knows? Whatever, I suspect we are closer to the truth of things when we are quiet and reflective. It is of how we feel at such times that we can be sure even if there are no words to express or confirm it. Everyone's feelings are different. Everyone's knowledge of themselves is different. That isn't to say this person is right or that person is wrong.

A writer is sometimes described as a wordsmith. Me, I have always been convinced that silence says far more than words can even begin to express.

My late mother once told me she loved silence. I thought this was a strange thing to say, especially as she loved chatting to people and could often be heard singing her favourite songs. So I asked her why. 'You can trust silence,' was all my she said. It has taken me years to understand what she meant. It is during peaceful, comforting silences  that I best reflect on all she contributed to the better part of me.

Now, it is often said that you never really know a person until you live with them. Perhaps that is why my dear, late mother once commented to the effect that before we can declare with authority that no one knows us better than ourselves, we need to learn to live with ourselves, that is to say the person we are rather than the person we would rather be or whom others would rather we be.

Oh, we like to think no one knows us better than we know ourselves. Yet, how well do we really know ourselves? How often do we face up to those home truths we don’t like to dwell upon so brush them under some proverbial carpet? Even so, we always remain aware of why we did so even if we prefer not to follow that particular path.

BOY: So how do your learn to live with yourself?

MOTHER: Look for the spirit of silence. If and when you find it, let it lift you above the noise of the world.

It was years before I even began to understand what she meant by that either.

“I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.”  - Chaim Potok, (The Chosen)

This poem is a kenning.

SPIRIT OF SILENCE

Listen out for me
a silence in the air, surpassing
all the music ever written;
Look, see how I fly the world
on wings as quick
and beautiful as anything
nature aspired for even
its favourite species between
earth and sky

Reach out, touch me,
let fumbling fingers discover
the purpose of creation;
Smell. Find in a spring shower,
urging winter to waken
where it would but sleep in
and delay things,
a fragrance of kinder truths
polluted by ‘progress’

Embrace me, let your senses
open as in the womb,
recover that spiritual identity
religion so covets
that it seeks to direct and control
what it likes to call ‘soul’
even if that means using threats
all the world makes under
cover of noise

Trust in me, the Spirit of Silence,
harbinger of all human resilience


Copyright R. N. Taber 2012

[Note: An earlier version of this poem  (revised final couplet) appears in my collection, Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012.[