it requires fewer and fewer words

The flowers don't care 

what you call them. 

They do their best work 

in silence. 

….. 

Some voices stay with you 

your entire life. 

Others are lost forever 

to the passing rain. 

….. 

The chasm between two words 

can be enormous; 

the comma after love alone 

keeps us wandering from one life 

to the next. 

….. 

It's so easy to mourn a life that never was, 

so hard to praise the long silences 

that taught us to speak. 

….. 

Even when you speak 

my name, 

it's what's not said 

that resonates. 

….. 

Beneath every breath there is the thought 

of breath, beneath the thought 

the silence. 

….. 

Something about silence 

that weighs more than the voice 

it leaves behind. 

….. 

Sometimes the memory of a voice 

is all that remains; aftermath of a long, hot rain 

clinging 

to the body of the earth-- 

….. 

The air casts its net, 

the silence swims through 

undetected. 

….. 

Silence is the god we pray to 

when there are no words 

to pray. 

….. 

The word of God 

lies in the unspoken, 

the unspoken being everything but. 

….. 

Some people never 

truly listen. 

For them death 

will be quite a shock. 

….. 

Each time I re-write 

my epitaph, it requires 

fewer and fewer 

words. 

 

When only silence 

remains, I know 

it will at last be 

complete. 

….. 

Perhaps I will recognize death 

by its lack of formality, the way it grants 

our silence so long in wandering 

at home at last. 

 

[Greg Watson, 'Notes Upon the Silence' from Things You Will Never See Again]