One Thousand Times

by Phoebe Anthus

You have nothing to say that has not been said
one thousand times before.

Is it liberating, this feeling that comes
like the passage of time,
slowly, softly, like the comfort of your
aging skin, a humbling awareness?

There is no pause to the mind-numbing haze,
explanations for aggression or pain,
the meaning of everything, even time, in its constant stream.
But the skill of receiving has slipped away
to this over-productiveness.

Interpretations of all the yesterdays
merge with the narrative sold on the news,
and we name the resulting chaos, “history.”
Try to learn or contribute something,
but the sum of our strengths and struggles,
and what we’ve battled, or broke,
the image we’ve made, in
the kingdom we’ve built
only adds up to an ache
of the secret we all yearn to know.

We found a truth and spoke it, but
the voice was swept away
in the tumult of all the earth,
clamoring to be seen, known,
and worth the salt that’s eaten.
So we digitally came together
to create a brave new world, where
the whole earth is our neighborhood
and the song we sing is one.
Then the world became an orchestra,
beautiful in its way,
but nobody seemed to notice
that the audience was gone.

I have nothing to say that has not been said
one thousand times before.
I have only this soul and this beating pulse
in bedlam we call life,
to offer a child as a sheltering place,
the place he knows as home.

“Delight and receive,” is the good earth’s song.
Make room for a holy hush,
like communion or shock,
like a death or a kiss,
where the space in between
is the two-edged sword that
enters both neighbor and self
in a moment of branding that marks
both as one,
in the moment truly called love.
Neighbor as self,
wounded by silence,
its fullness leaking slowly back
into the chaos we used to call life,
until we learned that

we have nothing to say that has not been said
one thousand times before
and the best good is unsayable,
your soul is all you own.
This silence is sheltered spot
that we can claim as home.
“Delight and receive,” is the good earth’s song.
Make room for a holy hush,
a moment of branding that marks
both as one, like communion
takes neighbor to self,
is wounded again and at once made whole
by the things that could not be said.

Phoebe Anthus is a stubborn artist with her head not so far into the clouds that she cannot notice the solid, sensible things as well.

Photography by Kenneth Godoy