When Silence Found Me | Poetry

Today a silent peace

steals over me.

I had bowed for it before,

let the old ascetic bless me

and smear my skin with ash.

I wore the Devi’s vermilion

in the part of my hair

and trusted that thin line of red.

Perhaps you spent decades

looking for an answer you could trust,

ringing temple bells,

kneeling in mosques.

Perhaps the lamps with their gold tongues

and the incense you lit by habit

kept you from hearing my silence.

Perhaps this was the peace within you,

the one that haunted you, then came

at a gallop into your soul

as you promised to give divine love

a different shape.

Now the silence is mine alone.

I thought inner peace would be quieter.

It speaks in my heart,

and with each beat I feel it

run warm through my veins.

This woman’s heart has waited

perhaps for centuries,

from rebirth to rebirth,

for this sudden knowing

on a bare mountaintop.