Tag: The Chattahoochee Review

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Poetry

When silence finds its way between the soft

by Michael Bailey

When silence finds its way between the soft seconds of a hushed reminder, the unquiet dark will soon fill the void with ragged cacophonies: alarms and buzzers, the steady tick of irrelevant deadlines, the restless pace of lighted dials. It is a futile attempt When the second hand of arteries and valves stop with a silent sigh of relief, there will be only a soft hush of inner and outer darkness nestled in the light. Music of the Cells It is the music that changes us, The happy hum of well-being The shrill scream of illness Like miniature whales, we moan In the vast sea, calling out to each other, Calling out to the Other. A pod of harmony Until the song is stilled And the crackle of static signals Our descent into the deep. When silence finds its way between the soft seconds of a hushed reminder, the unquiet dark will soon fill the void with ragged cacophonies: alarms and buzzers, the steady tick of irrelevant deadlines, the restless pace of lighted dials. It is a futile attempt When the second hand of arteries and valves stop with a silent sigh of relief, there will be only a soft hush of inner and outer darkness nestled in the light. Music of the Cells It is the music that changes us, The happy hum of well-being The shrill scream of illness Like miniature whales, we moan In the vast sea, calling out to each other, Calling out to the Other. A pod of harmony Until the song is stilled And the crackle of static signals Our descent into the deep. The Grammar of Life The grammar comes from the consonants and the verbs from the sentences: simple, complex, compound compound-complex; from phrases strapped on for effect nouns sometimes become nouns and verbs themselves doing double duty the only way in which to wrench sense out of the extreme nonsense that pours from our heart, our soul. The words hang before us, invisible, children of our breath, incarnated in lines and circles, spirit becoming flesh with a cry that comes from the silence between heart beats. But do we ever capture the experience get it correct with the stick figures and ovals capture the rapture of sunrise of sunset where transcendence gives birth to metaphor and simile between the white spaces and meaning scuttles among the vowels and consonants.


Music of the Cells is excerpted from Strange Vibrations: Doctors May Soon Listen to the Music of Your Cells by Monika Rice Spirituality & Health The Soul/Body Connection March/April 2005.

Michael Bailey is a graduate of the University of West Georgia and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He served 12 years in pastoral and educational ministries. His poems, columns, and short stories have appeared in the Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, THE POLISH-JEWISH HERITAGE FOUNDATION OF CANADA /newsletter, National Christian Reporter, The Christian Index, Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, Wellspring, and Resurgens, and The Chattahoochee Review.