Soul-Song

The silence holds an orchestra; its Maestro is our thought

And oh, the tender beauty of its soft, soulful requiem

Fills with an earnest solace the vast void of what is not

And lights the wick that once burned wildly with a daring dream

The sinister employment of our dubious tendencies

Dissolves upon the lilting notes of effervescent cheer

Be gone regret, and all its suffocating memories

The music of this silence weeps a sweeter sort of tear

…it will not pause to flounder in the dismal darkness where

We grapple with the conflict of desire and despair

This Maestro does not paint its smile with pretense or disguise

The measure of its tempo wraps us in love’s true embrace

No digital enhancements, no lip-syncing and no lies

For Thought is the discerner of the man behind the face

And oh, the sweet redemption that we seek for being us

And oh, the fervent longing to be heard and understood

At last spills free into a silence filled with what once was

But is no more; for Thought convicts where no man would or could

My failure and regret would be far more than I could bear

Forgiveness not for others, but for self ignites a tear

…the silence is not shattered as it falls upon my cheek

The Maestro gently nods but does not seek to quell its flow

A melody of grace-proportion fills unfathomed deeps

Its cadence fills the vault from whence the timeless night-winds blow

As mercy not ordained by what mortality deems fit

But from the One that tunes the Maestro in its rendering

Absolves me from a reckoning that flesh cannot acquit

And only in the utterance of full surrendering

Can I at last descry the melody that tunes the soul

As Maestro yields its baton to the One that makes us whole

© Janet Martin