Listen with the ear of your heart.
from the Prologue to the Rule of Saint Benedict
Because words can be rubber bullets,
can be pepper spray, can be cuffs.
Scared, my ears become rabbits
that burrow and hide. Angry,
my ears become stone gates
that refuse to let anything in.
It’s so painful to hear
the rhetoric of hate. Burns
like tear gas. Stuns and disorients
like flash-bang grenades.
No part of me then can believe
there is a sliver of divinity in you
that I want or need to listen to.
It is so hard to listen.
What if we do not listen?
I want to train my ears to hear
beneath the invective. Want
to listen beneath the attack.
What if I could hear the human
in you and not only the weapons
of your words? What if you could hear
the human in me and find a piece
of yourself? What if we left all our mouths
at home and let only our ears
gather in the streets?
Would we hear, then, the sounds
of each other’s breath, proof
of our mutual humanness?
What peace might arrive for a moment
if we listened, all of us miracles,
softening into that generous silence,
listening with the ears of our hearts
as the cold wind swirls all around?
*after reading “My Mouth (An Apology)” by Tom Holmes