Stilled Voice

The human voice,
a beautiful, terrible, powerful, potentially annoying, always unique, amazing thing;
capable of great musical feats, the power to communicate, and the ability to reciprocate and respond,
the voice is a strong connection between Self and the World.
But alas, when a voice is lost -held captive by sickness or even sorrow, psyche or injury-
much of great worth is also lost, held away by a glass cage of inability!
My voice, my instrument that God gave, feels broken and futile
and aches to be whole again.
Weak and helpless, unable to control, unable to respond, what can I do but listen,
when I would rather sing?
But I listen, and the Sunday hymns surround me,
their words clearer to my mind while my heart sings their meaning and my voice lies silent.
"Tune my heart to sing Thy grace," says one, and it is true
for that is what I want, more than the service of only lips,
when my voice returns.
My voice is my power to be present and be known,
but is it more important to be known
or to know?
To know things proved once again in my helpless state:
that trials build strength, that every cloud has a silver lining,
that to be deprived of the means to utter praises
will give me more joy and gratitude when once again I sing,
for to sing is to be free from the inside out.
To sing is to give more beauty to ordinary words,
to make them noticed, remembered, and pondered;
to sing is to express in a fuller spectrum
the colors felt by the heart and seen by the ears;
to sing is to know and be known and to learn,
all at once.
But for now
ink and type fall, like tears translated,
into silent words on white pages sent off into the distance,
like doves, swans, or angels' wings,
with my message here being the sad song
sung silently,
and sent to heaven by a lost voice
waiting to be found again.





A bit melodramatic, I know, all this to say in an out-of-the ordinary way what it means to me to have the teacher's curse of laryngitis! Still, I mean it.