a wall before silence

resisting silence

“something there is that doesn’t love a wall,”

wrote Robert Frost,

silence seems like something there is 

that doesn’t love it, too,

something that resists it,

resists openness to what can come from without,

or, in the stillness, from within,

if we are passive, receptive, not in control,

maybe even bored,

it is much easier to lose ourselves

in the doing, in devices, in the social,

for then we can deny we’re alone,

I require an hour of silence before supper

on my mountain trip with middle schoolers,

and for some students that challenge is hard,

as hard as hiking a mountain can be for others,

something there is that doesn’t love silence,

I contend that something else also needs it.

by Henry H. Walker

May 25, ‘17