the silence speaks volumes
the gray is something inside you, not really an exterior feature. i have seen gray-eyes, there is a certain void in them. an oncologist, a psychologist – whatever the label- needs no tests to prove what the mind can gather from a fraction of a glance in the right direction. when a hope is lost, another cracked plate crumbles, falls to the floor. the silence mutters, the silence matters. but the silence is shattered.
i once built a monstrosity out of lego bricks and flew them around on a pie plate in the living room. i was a child, and i thought freedom existed in more planes than what i was told in school. the horizons glowed golden, burnished bronze, burned in hues no earthly name could decipher…and did not decay, and did not gray. there was no gray world, no gray mind. no “i cannot do that today or any day.” the gray was safely buried inside the dimmed eyes of those who had precious little left. i was not one of them, nor would I ever reach their shore.
but the world would like to sandwich you into that place, at a certain age. if it was hazy, i could understand. but it isn’t. it is not subtle. there is a time when you find a stare means something much less than it did the day before, the week before, or even the month before. lines were never mentioned in a list of wonderful things, and the more gravity pulls, the more likely the world turns away. i have seen the sad faces of the lost and few, the bitter and withdrawn, the ones settling into the gray. it doesn’t frighten me as much as anger me. and the silence is shattered.
it wasn’t so long ago i had more faith in machines, and even men and women. the kind who greet you in the morning, pass by you at the grocery, wave hello as you drive past. but i am noticing fewer, as my days grow. fewer and fewer. and even some of them have gone gray in their twenties- gray in heart, gray in mind; a world nailed shut into a box without hope. something is wrong with their prayers…they are not verbal, not even gestured anymore.
it is not for me to say i will not pass this way again…or any way. nor to sense the weight of sadness that runs like seeping tears from the face of the aging. i remain awake, and my days a scribbling yet. no chapter end, no intermission, no annotation in another’s playground.
no matter what comes, love continues, faith continues, and even hope. for without hope, there is nothing. no passion for even breathing. i have seen too many crawl their way in the alleyways of gray, to huddle in the evening of another spent-out warm decay. and i wonder…how so many dim the lights until nothing moves them, not even the breeze that comes to kiss them goodnight.
the silence is shattered, but i will look to the one who gives peace in the silence…and go on another night, knowing that there is more than what is inside their box, inside their game, and i will live it to the fullest, until the wind of God brings me home again.
The Lost Kerryman 