Hum of Silence – Linda Ankrah Dove

It’s so sweet.
So why do I forget to enter my own shelter
silent from the global hubbub, the pandemic panic,
the pulsating thoughts of disease, deaths, disasters?
 
Today I do not forget.
I walk at sunrise and step out slowly, then sit quiet,
retreat into breaths that bathe my brain, lead my senses
to high cliffs above calm waters.
 
Call it meditating.
But that sounds daunting, too technical.
It is a quieting, a flowing into oceanic peace that hums unheard
beneath all human doings.
 
So, rather, call it praying.
Not a calling outward. A calling inward,
a listening, a reconnecting with the constant, underlying
hum of silence.
 
And, again, why so often do I forget?
Why do I act some days as if my own frenzied noise
could heal the world? Why do I forgo
my silent sheltering?
 
I really don’t know.               But I do know
the silence that I choose now is the sweetest song.
 
And today I call outward for our grieving world
that we may all listen for our silent shelters.


April 2020

Copyright 2020 Linda Ankrah-Dove

Bio:

Linda Ankrah-Dove is a poet who lives near Harrisonburg, VA. She moved to the lovely Shenandoah Valley over eleven years ago. Before that she lived in Arlington VA while working for two decades for the World Bank in poor countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Caribbean. Beginning to write poetry in 2007, she indulges in lyric and narrative focusing on communion with nature, life’s meaning and worldwide social and climate issues. She published her first book, Borrowed Glint of Jade, in 2019. Recent poems featurein the Virginia Literary Review, several Bridgewater International Festival anthologies, Spiritual Direction International, Months to Years, the Hunger-X website and the forthcoming Written in Arlington.

Donation Appeal:

Throughout June and July, we will be presenting on this web site work by poets and artists responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope you will find these works relevant, comforting and inspiring as we all cope with the economic and health-related fallout.

As you view the work on this site each day, we would like to encourage you to donate to the Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC). Their mission “ is to feed our neighbors in need by providing dignified access to supplemental groceries. AFAC is seeing a record number of families due to the COVID-19 pandemic as families who never thought they would ever be in need are now showing up at our doors for much needed food.”  And, in keeping with our hunger-focused efforts, you may also want to visit the Poetry X Hunger website where poems by many poets are posted and are being used by anti-hunger organizations.”

Throughout June and July, we will be presenting on this web site work by poets and artists responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope you will find these works relevant, comforting and inspiring as we all cope with the economic and health-related fallout.

Please consider donating to AFAC. If you do, let us know which poet or artist inspired you so we can send you a personal thank you.