Silence at Noon

Older than knowing or unknowing

This held breath
Tells us that we are mortal
That we are sacred
The answer to no known question
Silence at Noon
Nails us down senseless
Uncomprehending
A sacrament in another language
Beyond our grasp
Dense with meaning
With implications for our dwindled state
We can no longer hear
Silence at Noon
We know not who we are
Or why
Understanding has left us
The tide gone out
And we are stranded
Unfinished
Incomplete
Swamped by Eternity
Silence at Noon
Unpeopled streets and empty skies
A shred of light fidgets an oak-leaf
But nothing moves
Silence at Noon
For seven hundred years the Angelus bell
Flooded the fields and woods
Lifting the labourers face to heaven
Emptying skies and putting the birds to bed
And now we live in a secular age
This elemental energy holds us still
For no-one has told the birds that God is dead.
(from THE FRUIT THAT BITES BACK copyright E. J. Ward 2015)