Truth Shining Brighter: Kilby's Poetry

Truth shines the brighter clad in verse.
~Jonathan Swift

Ever since I have known Kilby she has had a way with words. Though the days when we would write each other thirty-page letters are gone, the gift of her words are still with me through her poetry blog.

Below is my favorite of her poems, but you can browse her blog for the full collection here.



Silent Tears 
(January 2006)

Ah, I could weep my spirit from mine eyes,
but all my tears are silent, all my sighs
are spirit-still and none must ever hear
or know that I, I make my bed to swim with tears
or that my heart's great thunder is a moan
suppressed behind my closet doors, that none
should ever know that lightning struck my heart
and striking, made it burn--or crack apart
(for if it's ashes now or sundered rock I do not know)--
but either way, I must not let it show
by broken tears and wild cries, whose only noise
can be within my mind. For outward poise,
hiding the shame of deep despair, must make
my darkness worse, because I'd lack
all pretenses of stillness, were I all alone.
Oh, wretched state! My lips are made of stone,
and so my spirit, crushed, must weep unknown.

But, however silent I may be, He hears.
With His own hand He wipes away my tears
and puts them in His special phial, as though
they were His precious ointment, which I know
He'll pour out once again upon my head
when all the sorrows of the world have fled
with all the tears, and joy is free,
and day is new, and I shall never be
alone, nor ever silence torture me.