Jeremiah has left for a while
late in a Lord’s Day morning,
taking Amos and Isla with him.
Misty has taken Miah and tiny Ellis
to go over to another daughter-in-law’s house
for some professional baby pictures.

I am left here alone for just a bit,
sitting at a scratched and worn wooden table,
eating a small plate of sausage and eggs
saved from this morning’s breakfast,
sipping hot coffee and finishing up
the leftover pastries from another son’s generosity.

I savor the flavor of pecan coffee
and lick the leftover glaze from my fingers.
Clouds from an early morning downpour
linger over western Kentucky,
darkening skies with the threat
–or promise–
of more rain.

In the silence of an empty home,
with imagination free to roam as it pleases,
my thoughts sometimes ease across the room,
or else echo from the walls,
sag onto the floor,
making no mark on the thinly varnished hardwood
softly reflecting the light
coming through the glass storm door.

The silence of an empty home,
can feel like relief,
a brief reprieve from the noise of young children,
an escape for a while from the arguments of adolescence,
or from darker disturbances and deeper angers,
a time for the mind to seek its own findings.

The silence of an empty home, though,
can also be a slow, choking yearning,
vacant for eternity in the absence of a loved one
whose walk ended too suddenly,
or children whose own ways have led them
on journeys with no promise of return.

The silence of an empty home
can be a blessing of peace,
a time of rest and relief,
or a deafening numbness
and the most torturous pain
known to the human heart.

We need times of healing silence,
an absence of aggravation or obligation,
a pause from relentless responsibilities,
a time for knowing the self
and understanding others as well.

We need such times of soothing silence
as speak of Heaven,
rather than a rasping resonance of Hell.


H. Arnett
6/24/24