Silence

Driving in to work this morning, this song filtered through the car radio : The Sounds of Silence. And you will have to forgive me for my lack of an engineering or mathematical mind...I did get my degree in History afterall, and straight edges never held for me much of a draw. So, through natural inclination, poems and lyrics line the places where I walk and so the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls And tenement halls stay with me all day...songs have such a beautiful way of transporting us, transforming us. Lyrics quietly nest in our mind and stay...but today I leave you with a poem by a new poet to me, A.E. Stallings. I hope you enjoy and think on the differences...

Extinction of Silence
by A.E. Stallings

That it was shy when alive goes without saying.
We know it vanished at the sound of voices
Or footsteps. It took wing at the slightest noises,
Though it could be approached by someone praying.
We have no recordings of it, though of course
In the basement of the Museum, we have some stu­ffed
Moth-eaten specimens—the Lesser Ruffed
And Yellow Spotted—filed in narrow drawers.
But its song is lost. If it was related to
A species of Quiet, or of another feather,
No researcher can know. Not even whether
A breeding pair still nests deep in the bayou,
Where legend has it some once common bird
Decades ago was first not seen, not heard.