The Voices that are Silent

This is one I wrote years ago. I just realized that I had not posted it before, so here it is now.


As wind sweeps down the mountain pass
it brings an icy song
that crescendos through the lowlands,
It's voices growing strong.
And yet, there is an emptiness,
a hollow in the wind.
The swiftly fading echo of
a song that once had been.

The ocean booms within its depths
and trills upon it's shores,
while voices echo from it's waves
and sing across it's floors.
But, in this joyous melody
an ending has begun.
For, in the chorus of the sea,
a song is now unsung.

The rhythm of the running feet,
staccato, through the trees.
The hunters' song ripples the night
and echoes on the breeze.
But, as the leaves in winter time,
the singers fall to die.
And, like those withered, winter leaves
their silence fills the sky.

We listen, still, to hear the songs
that can be sung no more
while we watch as living singers
become the stuff of lore.
And as the choir of voices
is silenced one by one
we, finally, will face the day
when all the singing's done.

We cannot lose the songs of earth.
Already we must pay that cost.
Only voices we have silenced
could sing the songs that we have lost.