I feel
like I have been waiting for the silence all my life.
Now, finally, it has come.
And I sit
still, gazing out my window, the silence is everywhere around me.
Only it’s not quite at all. It
thunders through my head. It peals
in my heart like a bell, tolling the terrible end of your eyes before my face.
If I reach out my hand I can almost lay my fingertips against your cheek again.
But I
won’t reach for you. I must let
you slip back into the silence again. I
want to climb to the top of the mountain that I see from my window and stand in
the fury of the wind. I will throw
off my hood and let the wild wind tear at my hair.
I will lift my face up, close my eyes, and rage at the sky!
The wind will rip away my words and leave only silence.
I will
give my love for you its freedom. Into
the storm, on the silent wings of eagles, on the wings of doves, I will set it
free. It will disappear into the
blackness of darkness. In silence
it will search through the night and perhaps it will come to you.
Like
all things that attain their freedom, I know it can never return to me.
Alone, silent, I will descend from the mountain, returning, to wait.
I will stand in the night alone. Naked.
Still. Silent. Not a sound, not a
stirring, not a variation of the shadow. Only
the moonlight. I will not breathe,
not think, not feel. Not feel the
softness of your skin against me, your lips, your hands.
I will stand in silence until the night ends.
With it’s passing perhaps the storm within my heart will pass also.
When the winds of my sorrow become still at last, all that remains is the
silence.
I’ve waited for it all my life.
©1999
D.L. Miles Anchorage Alaska