Silence Unveiled
By John Herlihy

Is silence of the world only the absence of sound,
The free-floating hot-air balloon finally run aground.
Silence is the garden of meditation, the sheikh said,
A gathering prayer in summer inside the garden shed.
Our prayer seeking revelation of early morning dreams;
That accompany dawn light as it descends in streams.
We kneel quietly within our hearts, our thoughts inward,
Holy aspirations of words and verses that yearn upward.
Truth to tell, we will settle for less, or even possibly more,
We don’t know for sure, our hearts will our hope restore.
Words lock us within our own desire, petitions, requests,
While the absence of words, of sound, alleviates our stress.
Silence opens the great plains to the impertinence of the wind;
Silence brings the blue of open sky down into the lake pinned.
We speak of “filling the silence” when silence is already full.
Like its counterpart rhythm and tone, silence is stately, grand,
Ready to absorb the cacophony of the world and withstand.
The tempo of well-timed silence has more eloquence than speech,
Drawn from the well of the human spirit, far beyond earth’s reach.