The sky, pin-sharp blue
The air is crisp and cool
Allowing colours space and light
To shout in measured harmony
And sing with perfect pitch
The road is passive, tarmac dry
No sound of far-off traffic
Roaring rubber, rumbling speed
Going somewhere fast, determined purpose
Never still
Till now, when silence hurries in
To fill the vacuum
Sometimes welcome
Sometimes not
You hear far more when no one speaks
You hear the sound of doubt and fear
You hear the background hum of bees
That tells of truths you never knew
Before
Or knew, but never heard
Or saw but didn’t see
Or kept at bay for fear that truth
Might raise its ugly head
And put the world in disarray
And upset the apple cart
But now we wait, and hear, and see and fear
There’s too much time to think
Or not enough to consider
And think again
So we wait
And wait
And wait
For the noise to return
And fill the empty room and cover up the sound
Of doubt and fear
And truth and light
And thought
Then, once again there’ll be no need
To let the quiet voices in
That whisper in our ear
With uncomfortable news
And we can smile again
On the outside