Why Banish Silence / Fish Have Given Their Lives for Us to Touch

I was thinking,

I am hurting because someone else is hurting. I am doubting because someone else is doubting. And this pain is not to be condemned or banished. It is to be held and loved and listened to.

Who am I that I should ask something to leave my house? Do not leave, I should say, but sit with me a while. Cry, or take the time you wish to take. I should make notes. When you speak, I should listen.

But the day builds and builds and bridges are constantly burned. I say "Not you, not anger." I say "Not pain, again, not me."

But this is part of our common inheritance.

Under me pass many fish through the dead shale, their skeleton bones crushed into fine powders. And in their eyes, oil swims which brings us closer, sends us over oceans, through the desert in cars--the moss does this too, pressed by years and our feet.

Under me, movement. Though stillness is requested at night. Lie down, why should I? If I am given to rest, then I will sleep. But if something moves through me, I should listen.

I am no more myself than the grass is the sky, but in their meeting, through carbon and oxygen, words. Words that grab your wrist and mine. And this is our hold. I am yours and love, you are mine. But not possession, no sooner the grass expresses the sky than the sky unfolds into the grass, but are they not forever separate?

And below, the ashes of countless fish. Do you see? This mixture. How things pass, constantly.

So why banish silence? Welcome it as one welcomes adoration. The silence adores You! And so does darkness and pain, can it not touch you? Can your body be spared creation? It is creation. I do love You.

So what to do with days that build and bridges torn down? When doubt-birds and anger-birds have no more branches and I refuse to know the mapping of roots of trees from which the birds sing? Then I deny creation, again, like a final cry against my own self and You.