Pat Hale

Speaking Through the Silence

–after “Message,” painting by Lois Tarlow

Finally the painting whispers to me words I’ve long tried to hear. It says this darkness is not absolute. A starless night holds within it certainty of morning, promise of light, the silent rush of an owl’s wing, singing of breeze through dry brush, soft intake of breath before speech.

It says even in silence people can reach each other. Figures drawn on a wall: This is a deer, this a hunter. This is what it says to me with these sticks and shapes. I look at what the artist has painted, in wonder at the language she speaks.

Pat Hale