by Frances Brown

 

	What becomes of the seen but not heard who wander the unfluted ground of fields too small to demand cross-hatching, caught in the fray of doting warriors? Do they watch in parched white silence non-converging patterns and distant sounds of a world up above their heads? Do they strain on tip-toe to see directives on a gilt-edged scroll, and wait for the beat of a drum so hearing ears and seeing eyes can come to silent play? Where is the hearth for things that never get said; For the bridled tongue that holds pain and rage in the roof of the mouth; For words lodged in the small throat when life demands a swallowing? Do they wax like daisies on a weedy tract, shouldering tall grasses that block morning dew from their upturned faces? Yet command random breezes to tilt and sway the yellow blades, and bear what the source admits: a drop of rain a slit of sun? Do they stand like the Little Boy Jesus-- hungry-eyed and mute before the cross thin in the shadow of the world's Light lost between the Word and the body politic? Do they wobble through their ordeal of days Unsuffered Unspoken Conditioned in The Promise? Is it silence and not the cross that breaks the burden-bearer The bloated belly of the starved spirit-child that times the soundless step on the wilderness path and returns in the ninth hour-- not with a whisper to be quelled by gently descending doves but with a loud cry, erupting with crows' hunger to shrug that yoke of peace?

 

	"Silence Not the Cross" © 1996 by Frances Brown
	Original Graphics © 1996 by Jim Davis-Rosenthal

 

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