There is an odd assumption that silence is the absence of something.
It isn’t.
Anyone can hear noise. It takes very little effort. We spend our days surrounded by it: traffic, phones, conversations, notifications, news, opinions and the constant expectation that something louder is always more important.
Quiet is different.
Quiet has to be found.
For me, it is usually found on the allotment. Not because nothing is happening, but because everything is. Bees drift from flower to flower without asking to be noticed. A barn owl appears as though it has simply become visible rather than arrived. Songbirds hold conversations that have carried on for centuries. Jean mutters to herself as she scratches for something only she understands. Even the rabbits beneath the ground are busy with lives we rarely stop to consider.
None of it is dramatic.
None of it demands attention.
Yet somehow it speaks louder than the world beyond the gate.
I wrote The Loudest Thing after one of those mornings. There was no grand revelation waiting for me. No lesson, no epiphany, no attempt to escape the world. I was simply sitting in a place that reminds me how much we overlook because we are taught to look for spectacle instead of presence.
The poem is really about observation.
It asks a simple question: what if the loudest thing in our lives isn’t the thing making the most noise?
Perhaps it is the small things we nearly miss. The rhythm of nature continuing without applause. The comfort of familiar places. The quiet companionship of animals. The feeling that, for a little while, nothing needs improving, explaining or rushing.
I don’t expect everyone to read the poem in the same way. That’s the joy of poetry. It belongs as much to the reader as it does to the person who wrote it.
But if, after reading it, you find yourself stopping for a moment to listen to a blackbird, watch a bee disappear into a flower, or simply notice a quiet corner you have walked past a hundred times before, then perhaps it has done exactly what I hoped it would.
Because sometimes the loudest thing in the world is the one that never raises its voice.
The Loudest Thing
The morning lingers as it wakes,
An easy, unhurried breath to take.
Upon the wooden bench I sit,
As early sunbeams slowly knit.
Beside my boots, in feathers dressed,
Old Jean is murmuring her best.
A soft, contented, clucking sound,
While deep within the hidden ground,
The baby rabbits shift and play,
Beneath the soil, secure and grey.
High up above this small green plot,
A silver plane is but a dot.
It cuts a line across the blue,
And silently it passes through—
A quiet ghost that leaves no sound
To break the stillness on the ground.
Beyond the hedge, the wild deer play,
And while the gentle hours away,
Not far from where the herons rest,
Beside a rare great egret guest.
A flash of white, a stately stride,
Where secret, peaceful things abide.
And on a perch of weathered oak,
Where evening shadows softly spoke,
A majestic barn owl watches still,
A silent guardian of the hill,
With heart-shaped face and feathers white,
Now resting from its hunting flight.
Down by the water's mossy edge,
Beneath the reeds and floating sedge,
The frogs and toads blink in the sun,
Their daytime dozing just begun.
While deep within the shaded pool,
Where currents ripple dark and cool,
The great crested newt, with dragon spine,
Glides through the water, dark and fine.
The bushes come alive with song,
As local voices join along:
A blackbird leads the morning hymn,
From somewhere on a leafy limb,
While friendly robins take their cue,
And goldfinches add music too.
The bees move on from bloom to bloom,
With no great rush, yet making room
To gather up the golden sweet,
That makes our local hives complete.
The world away is rushed and loud,
Hidden beneath its busy shroud.
But here, the peace is deep and then—
The loudest thing is one small hen.