Communication Without Words

I like words. I like to talk. Most of the people I feel closest to, like words and like talking. However, it is so important to remember that for many, many people talking is not their best way of communicating. My husband and many people express their love through their labor, just like the father in the following poem by Robert Hayden. This poem reminded me of the need to acknowledge, respect and celebrate those that labor in love’s austere and lonely offices. Talk does not always illuminate, often, it can be a weapon that can distort truth. Those of us that love words and their uses must not, assign intellectual or spiritual accomplishment for those that master the use these tools.

Ultimately, all means of communication are only tools for touching each other's hearts. No matter how eloquent the words, if they do not serve the heart they are empty. Love expressed by hands are equal to love expressed by words. Enjoy the poem.

Those Winter Sundays
by Robert E. Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?