You had Your chance

You had Your chance                                                                 
 
You had Your chance to speak
but, held Your piece – perhaps,
 
because only a handful understood Your language.
Later, Your silence became Gautama’s flower;
 
a sand grain, moon and stars’ silence;
the noiseless marrow of our bones;
 
the pause between heartbeats;
the silence of the backs of our hands,
 
the napes of our necks –
a silence wrapped in dust;
 
the kernel of the grain;
the hollowness in the horn of plenty.
 
You had Your chance to speak –
and Your Word flooded the planes,
 
reaching the smallest, most turbulent and severe
of all our dry places; sated the heart
 
and began our re-acquaintance
with the lost language of God. 
 
O child of God, His dialogue, continuous and pervasive,
how could you ever feel beyond its range?   

                               (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)