Lost in the Noise

Your head is thick with travel,
too many places,
to many visions,
competing versions of the universe
dance with their compelling colors,
their Shakespearean tragedies, comedies and truths,
more real than reality,
drowning out your quiet voice.

You are not sure if the noise
is a weapon, or a wall.  You
do not know what lies behind it,
only that it is there,
only that it batters you,
that you come close to disappearing,
another brushstroke in a huge canvas
where someday some scholar
hunting for something undiscovered will wonder
what that tiny brush stroke meant,
so different from the others,
not loud, yet screaming in it’s difference,
a defiance lost in the noise.

About This Poem

At times, I feel my voice is lost in the noise around me. In everyone else’s need to talk. Lost in the voices in my own head. Lost in the vastness of needs around me. I am no different in this. It’s common.

But no one’s voice is common. Each is unique. Each story is valid, important, How in the world does God do it? Listen to us all. I would go mad.

The painting is called “Hand Held” by Jane Hammond.

Tom