Savoring silence

Silence is what happens as the egg rolls off the counter-top
Silence is like little padded feet – turning around will make your heart stop
Silence is looking down from high and watching that big rock drop
Silence is when we ponder life and savor it like Aesop

Post Script

This poem treats silence not as the absence of an event, but as the instant when attention tightens around one. The egg has crossed the edge. The padded feet have approached unnoticed. The rock has begun its fall. In each scene, sound is either about to arrive or has become unnecessary because the body already understands what is happening.

The final line turns the sequence into a small fable. To savor silence like Aesop is to remain with the pause long enough for consequence, comedy, and perhaps a lesson to reveal themselves. The poem never states the moral. It stops while everything is still falling.

Milo Winter’s illustration makes the final line delightfully literal. The town mice have been interrupted while enjoying an abundant feast and are fleeing from an unseen danger. The food supplies the savoring, Aesop supplies the fable, and the startled mice supply the padded feet. The artwork contains nearly every element of the poem without reproducing any one of its scenes exactly.

Read beside Before we speak, the poem becomes part of a small meditation on wordless attention. There silence guides shared movement. Here, it becomes the held breath before consequence.

Image credit: The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, from The Æsop for Children (1919), illustrated by Milo Winter. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.