I’ve opened the window on this cooler morning. Quiet. Not quite eight o’clock and the day is still, no wind, no bird calls or sirens, the willow droops, no errant breezes to ruffle it. Only a few crickets in the bushes below my window. It’s like the world has paused, exhausted by the last couple of weeks, glad to just sit here and be silent.

A financial astrologer I follow says the days of 1-10 August are a preview of the issues we’ll be facing during the 2012-2015 time span. The past ten days, without a doubt, have been–well, busy, if nothing else, although busy seems a lusterless word for what’s been happening: a less than useful debt agreement reached, drought in the U.S., the stock market down by around 2,000 points, riots in London, demonstrations in Israel–Israel!!– over poverty in the working class, a Chinook helicopter down with the highest death count in one single day in a ten-year war, an inbox that sustains itself on words, and words, and more and more words.

And here I am, adding more words to your already overfull inbox.

Except good news also made its way, abet occasionally lost in the scramble of everything else. As a simple example, the window’s open–the garden still drought stricken but it’s not Texas out there. In the big issues, Somalia’s militants pulled out of Mogadishu which will allow aid shipments and worker to return; yes, thousands are dying every week, but a crack opens. We need to recognize the cracks of light when they happen and help them widen.

And yesterday, Philip Levine was named poet laureate for the United States. A working class poet who writes about social and political justice. Fancy that.

Fact is, silence is the perfect water:

unlike rain it falls from no clouds

to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,

to give heart to the thin blades of grass

fighting through the concrete for even air

dirtied by our endless stream of words.