All truth hides in a bird’s small silence,
the world’s secret
folded into a single grain of pause
between two bursts of chirping,
or in just one.
In that hush, the bird aligns itself
with the steady beep of an assembly line,
the long whistle of a factory,
a train’s sorrowing howl,
the thin distance between tick and tock,
the faint complaint of a loose screw
beneath the railway of time,
that thin, trembling hinge
on which all motion turns.
::
That silence
is the hinge on which the whole planet
leans,
a breath so slight
it rebalances the cacophony of smokestacks
and human errands,
a pause that keeps the universe
from rattling apart.
For in that slender unspeaking,
the bird gathers every scattered hum,
the groan of a crane hoisting steel,
the metallic gossip of tools,
the soft choking of exhaust,
and transmutes them
into an immaculate stillness
that refuses to scream.
And we,
who blister ourselves on hours
and ache with the rust of repetition,
forget that truth is not in the clang,
but in the interval.
A bird’s silence
is the world remembering itself,
the moment time hesitates,
unscrews its own bolt,
and lets the eternal
peer through.
