Moments of Silence

What is a moment of silence?

Is it a response to our “disbelief, terrible sadness and quiet unyielding anger”

Does it demand our introspection,

Or do we know exactly what we feel in that moment?

In that moment of political, social silence,

undefined by the simple parameters of time,

are we fully aware of the empires we make?

Should we accept the silence?

Who does silence honor?

What does it say of a nation that it is

Speechless. Unprepared. Non-responsive. Irresolute.

In that moment we redefine ourselves recklessly.

That moment is stolen time, never to be returned.

It is a child that cannot care for those who occasioned its feeble and uncanny existence.

Its irony is deafening to a race distinguished by speech.

It is a moment of surrender,

To something new and foreign

Not terror but fear.

In that moment, while terror played the fool

Justice removed her blind

To gape at the spectacle

And despair with a tiny prick

Stole her virtue in the street.

So what have we to say of moments of silence

They are imperial bridges across the Rubicon

Assembled by the people working in silence