Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other
lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.
When all the other things seem lively and read,
this one fades. Yet the notes of it
touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound
of the names laid over each child at birth.
I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.
If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,
the telling is so soft
that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,
becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again
to hear the second music.
I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.
All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart.
-Annie Lighthart
*******
All over the globe, the people who study sound are measuring a quiet that no living person has heard before. The people who study earthquakes are noticing a calm in the earth’s surface vibrations that, too, likely pre-date modernity. Through our bedroom windows at dawn, the birds seem louder although scientists believe they are singing less loudly… that it is our ability to perceive that has changed. It is the perfect time to listen for “the second music.”
Set your ear to it. “Stop and stop again.”
Jess Stevens, writing mindfulness for Isabella