Saturday's Sayings - Silence ~ The Silence of a Mother's Beating Heart

Saturday's Sayings

Silence

~

The Silence of a Mother's Beating Heart

Listen! Do you hear the silence

Of this mother's beating heart

Rendered speechless from her child's death, and since...

Do not judge this mother's broken heart

When from her side, her child's been ripped apart.

For her, her world has come to a stop;

Her silence is a form of shock...

What's there to say when love is her stock,

For who can tell the time

When the numbers fall from the clock?

~Angie Bennett Prince

*****

Silence is medication for sorrow.

~Arab Proverb

You can hear the footsteps of God when silence reigns in the mind.

~Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Silence is more musical than any song.

~Christina Rossetti

Words can make a deeper scar than silence can heal.

~Author Unknown

When all the noise is gone there is only God.

~Author Unknown

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence.... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

~Mother Teresa

*****

Since I lost you, I am silence-haunted;

Sounds wave their little wings

A moment, then in weariness settle

On the flood that soundless swings.

~D. H. Lawrence, from his poem, "Silence"

*****

Silence

Silence.

I think I can see

what silence is to me...

They cannot hear me now.

All I want to speak about is you.

So when they want me to talk

I have nothing to say

For only you fill my mind,

And you, they will not hear.

What on earth is important

but my love

and my love lost?

Anything else is fluff.

I don't want to hear

And can't seem to stomach

what they have to say

for what is important to them

is dribble to me...

For, she died,

And I am lost.

Now, do they wish I had not spoken?

I will not speak. I have nothing else to say.

They cannot hear what I have to say.

All they seem to say is their agenda for me.

And I cannot do agendas.

And what they fuss about

among themselves

is frivolous...

So I not only see your loss,

but have to see their waste,

their waste of their lives on the frivolous...

And their loveless animosity to any who are weak,

and I am weak...

My heart is torn out,

and with that I must deal,

And I will deal with that privately...

with those who are safe.

When the phone rings,

my heart drops...

My heart immediately wonders,

"Whom have I lost now?"

Is it any wonder I cannot answer...?

Silence.

~Angie Bennett Prince

*****

We live by symbolic substitution.

At the grave's lip,

what is but is not

is what returns you to

what is not.

~Frank Bidart, from his poem, "Like"

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

~Elizabeth Bishop, from her poem, "One Art"

*****

I'm so tired, but I can't sleep...

standing on the edge of something much too deep

funny how I feel so much but cannot say a word...

we are screaming inside, but we can't be heard...

~Sarah McLachlan

Picture, thanks to Grieving Mothers

Poem - The Silence of a Mother's Grieving Heart - Angie Bennett Prince - 5/20/11

Poem - Silence - Angie Bennett Prince - 5/20/11

Other poetry quotes, from The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing ~by Kevin Young