LISTEN

Do you hear the gentle sighs?

The wind is shifting through the tree.

Do you hear the children’s cries?

Do shadows hurry past and flee?

Do you hear the beggar’s plea?

Reaching, plaintively, out to you.

Do you hear the shifting sea?

Or the sound of falling dew.

Do you hear within your mind,

Voices calling in the night?

Incoherent jumbled sounds.

They disappear with morning light.

Listen, hear the earth is groaning.

Hear aloud her dying scream.

Listen, hear her teardrops raining.

Or do you think it’s all a dream.

I listen to the many voices

They cry to be heard within my head.

They come to me, give no choices.

But to listen to the words they’ve said.

Long lost souls that have departed

From the shell in which they were born

No surrender from the life they started.

Broken rosebuds, shredded and torn.

Their pleading words to none I tell.

I keep them hidden within my brain.

Tell no one of their little Hell.

Lest those I tell think I’m insane.

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R. A. Spicer ©  April 19, 2005