The Deafening Silence

 It’s another rainy day at the library. Sunny one day and the next; it’s too wet to venture outdoors. It is a perfect day to get lost in the written word.

    The only noises heard are faint. No crashing blasts of sound that might startle me, only bits of noise that need concentration to hear or to figure out what they are.

    There are some voices, far enough away to be undecipherable, the knowledge that they come from children is all that comes through. The only other sounds filtering into the space I’m in are a few pages being shuffled at a near-by desk and the gentle tapping from a computer keyboard.

    The windows in front of me reveal what is outside and why I am on the inside. It looks cold, a wet cold April morning. I put a marker between the pages of my book and look out the window, my mind drifting. The sky was clear yesterday, unlike the grey clouds of today which seemed to have settled in. I daze a bit and think back…

    Last night I watched as the just past full moon rose over the horizon. A bit past nine in the evening, houses on the hillside had their outdoor lights on. Some houses were dark and in others, lights illuminated the windows, the owners still awake, perhaps with televisions on or cuddled up together. No cars moved in the neighborhood and if anyone was outside, they were too far away to see.

    Behind their houses the moon was rising. It started with just a faint lightning on the brush stroked clouds. Gradually they brightened and turned orange as the moon came closer to the edge of the world. Soon, a thin sliver of the moon appeared. Slowly it enlarged as it rose, getting bigger and bigger.

    The houses visible in the camera lens seemed small compared to the huge ball of light behind them. The moon appeared even brighter against the darkness of the distant hillside. Inside the houses, the occupants had no idea what was happening behind them. They had no idea the part that they were playing in my evening!

    My camera caught the lights of their houses along with the reflected light of the sun bouncing off the disc of the moon. It was the artwork of our world, the beauty which occurs daily, if we are lucky enough to see it!

    It was only me and the moon. Even without the camera, the moon looked huge against the distant hillside, and in turn, made me feel small standing there all alone.

    The world was nice and quiet as the beauty of the cosmos screamed out in front of me. Sometimes the loudest noises are nearly silent!

    Returning to the present and the silence of the library, I opened my book and returned to my reading.