In the winter, when the summer people have gone home,
at least in the old days,
there was a silence that would fall over the harbor
and an inaudible sigh of relief from all of the beings that make their home here.

The herons are not silent all of the time,
but just watch them standing at the edge of the water,
when the harbor is still and the boaters and paddlers are gone
stalking tiny fish and crabs, still and quiet as the fog.
There is something soothing about the deep silence of these moments.

In more recent years the rowers have taken over
so after dawn instead of silence we hear the motor boat
with the drill sergeant shouting at the rowers
and the rhythmic clunking of their oars as they speed across the calm water
slicing it into ribbons of light, but loud and aggressive.

I keep silent.
This is not an opinion I can voice aloud here
the rowers are very popular:
they win awards, they host regattas
but while I think of the harbor as a nature reserve,
they see it as a sports arena.

Not that I don’t love gliding on the water myself,
but I prefer to do so in silence
in a canoe,
preferably at sunset
watching the seals and kingfishers, and the fish jumping.

Silence may be deeper in the caves or cathedrals I have visited
but that sort is hollow compared to the silence over water.

Silence is also what I notice first in a snowstorm.
When it snows here, which is rare,
there’s a different level of quiet: of respect
and it’s the lack of sound I notice
which makes me look outside for the snow.

Silence is what I crave after too many hectic days of news
especially today’s news.
But to be honest, I also miss the cacophony of the coffee roaster
and the voices around the coffee shop,
where I used to sit and write
absorbed in my own work
while the cheerful voices of my community babbled around me
like a flock of Canada geese rising from the water.
I miss that.