Category: Silence & Solitude

Legend tells us the strong wield sword and steel,

rescuing the damsel to sit atop the hill.

Society tells us the strong are full of might,

imposing their will to win the loudest fight.

But history tells us the quiet ones hold the strength.

They conquer every battle without help or aid.

They slay the demons of a heavy past,

vanquishing monsters you never knew.

They endure without boasting of hidden conquests,

without recognition or parade.

The only proof of our strength

is that we are sitting

right here.

“You talk to yourself to hear yourself speak,”

My mother would say, her patience worn thin.

The youngest of three, a ghost in the hall,

Watching the shadows of evening close in.

Solitary hours before dinner was made,

A boy creating a world on the floor.

Now the habit remains like an old wooden latch

Keeping the winter away from the door.

For silence is fertile, a wild, empty space

Where the ghosts of old history are easily made.

I anchor my mind when the perimeters fade,

To keep the long loneliness outside the gate.

Let the world call it strange to converse with the air;

It is only the masonry guarding the deep.

When the room grows too heavy,

I break through the dark—

I talk to myself To hear myself speak.

I began where the world was small and green,

counting the heartbeats of quiet beasts,

the air thick with a lucky, unburdened light.

I was a creature of the open yard,

mischief moving through the high grass

before the maps were drawn,

before the long winter arrived.

Then the horizon broke at the yard’s edge—

a sudden iron weight, a sharp theft of breath.

The right side of the world went dark,

the body redrawn in heavy, stubborn lines,

and the boy who ran was left behind.

The air turned thick and unfamiliar,

and the doors of the loud world slammed shut.

I became the stranger in a foreign climate,

carrying a quiet no one knew how to speak to.

For decades, I have lived along the perimeter,

a solitary drop watching the ocean move in pairs.

I left the crowded tables to the daylight people,

withdrawing into the cool sanctuary of the mind.

Stone by stone, in the silence of great halls,

I forged a kingdom out of ink and thought,

moving across changing hills,

standing before rows of empty eyes to pass down the flame,

yet always returning to the house with one chair.

I can navigate the vast, invisible stars of the intellect,

but I am lost in the simple country of a hand held out.

At 3:00 AM, the old questions still circle the ceiling:

How do you cross the distance between two rooms? What is the word that makes a stranger stay?

The solitude is a heavy coat I never chose to wear,

yet I wear it like armor now.

I am a builder of quiet history, waiting on the border,

hoping an eye will look past the heavy frame,

and love the hidden, wild music of a heart still ready to be known.