Silence and Shouts

Silence and Shouts I listen to him breathing. If it’s labored, I ask, “Are you okay?” And from over the rings of walls of silence he has built around himself, He implores, “You hear so poorly, you can’t hear me just speaking, But you can hear my breathing! How is that?” I answer with silence, because I do not know. It is true about the “How.” I do not know. And silence is the pillow I fall back on; Full and fluffed, so my head sinks deep, to mute whatever continues Into a sort of distant runmbling. On the days when all and everything is a struggle, like Reaching across the table beside me for an eraser, or to hoist my coffee mug, I grunt or groan with the effort, from the physical pain of most every motion… I admit, I groan. During those times when my joints’ pain Is so intense that turning over in bed or moving my arm to lay accross My chest, precipitates the aid of some involuntartary, weakness-induced Aid, like sounds: grunts, moans, or grumbles from my being, Not meant to be heard (even by me!) and after which, (after who knows really how long) I interpret the rumbling from across The walls as asking, “Do you know you’ve spent the last hour groaning Every other second? I know you don’t really have to…Like times before.” My self-defence retorts, “I do not try to groan!” as I go deeper into my pillow, Turning onto my side, away from the mumbles that might continue, and which I interrupt to announce as I push the pillow over my head, “I’m not listening!” I feel like Marie-Louise…Josephine Antoinette, urged to follow and stand-in For Napoleon as he waged his many wars…While she covered her head with Pillows against the boomming of cannonballs…And his disgrace. While here, my general wishes to achieve his well-earned reign In the kind of escaping silence that sometimes brings peace — once the disputes, challenges, matters of state, And minor annoyances — are all delegated or put aside; while I, I am seen To reside in the lower realm of that simple hobby Beauty — with My pens, papers, beads and cords, paints and words… To smile…Quietly And ponder about the paths to wander out… And floating above my pillow, I pray and raise wondering questions (perhaps rhetorically) to God — on His Supreme and unquiet throne — “Where is the comfort for the screams of pain and impending death? Or, Dear Lord, for the aching cries of lonliness, when we long for the touch Of another, some loving other, here, beside your glorious ever-presence… For our Earthly being — human to human, skin to skin? And why were we made able to whimper, to mumble, to gasp, and to groan, Yet otherwise, when happy or content, are able only to smile And are not, from a grace born out of silence, To purr?