Simply Incredible
By John Herlihy

Incredible,
How sound can diminish everything around;
Little voices break the silence from the sky to the ground.
The storm shatters the peace that holds sway;
Bird chatter and daytime crickets drive the peace away.
If we listen to sound, we take no notice of stillness now singed;
Still diminished, we set anchor in little voices that ride the wind.

Incredible,
How silence can reign everywhere around;
Silence magnifies space and distance from the sky to the ground.
The rhythms of stillness overwhelm the rhythms of sound;
Its heart beats within us like a second heart most profound.
Aloneness, tranquility, the solitude lends us its strength;
The stillness borrows from infinitude its endless length.

Incredible,
There is a rhythm to silence that precludes all sound;
It keeps us fully grounded and wrapped up, tightly wound.
The distant bird soars aloft the stillness to capture,
Feathered wings that rise upon air simply inspires rapture.
The shadows, the lightning, the breeze have no true voice;
But in their silence they are able to praise God and rejoice.

Lightning flashes to reveal everything at half mast;
Thunder rumbles as if it were tearing the mountains in half.
Shadows make no sound, stillness prevails as quietude in kind;
While wakefulness and vigilance polish the mirror of the mind,
To reflect reverence of silence, not the flash and roar of the sky,
Leaving those who fall into its warm embrace feeling simply . . .
Incredible.