Silence And Words
by john m. davis



Silence:
Adam after the apple.
Isaac before the mountain.
Jacob at his deathbed.
Job after God’s rebuke.
______It’s what wasn’t said,
dead air, hearts tight as a fist;
what God gives mankind to shape
the pure music of the human spirit;
a quiet that reminds us,
if only in fragments,
where we’ve been, where we go.

Words:
sounds, symbols
those morphemic constructions
we arrange with silence.
Some words just fester,
linger in thought,
feed on themselves
like a leprosy of mind.
Some words climb the throat,
scratch,
spew from hollow mouths
poison past the hiss of lips.
Decay from inside out.

They’ll go the way of wasted words,
_______unheard, ignored...

But others gently shape,
escape our moving lips.
They issue from another kind of mind,
a divine breath
that silhouettes our souls.





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