Peace and Quite

By Lee Ann Hodge © 1990

Issue: May, 1990

What in the world has happened
To our peace and quiet?
You know the kind you once could hear,
In the stillness of a country night.

It seems like now in our fast pace living
In this world of automation,
There's always the sound of progress around...
Going on in our growing nation.

The honking horns from automobiles
And police cars with their sirens and lights,
And dogs barking until all hours...
Breaks the silence of the night.

Radios boom from passing cars
And airplanes pass over in flight,
And there's no place where we can escape...
To once again find that peace and quiet.

I can remember when I was a child
And ran barefoot through the hills,
When nighttime came and we retired...
I was sung to sleep by the whippoorwills.

And across the meadow down by the pond
We could hear the croaking of the frogs,
And crickets chirped their lullabies...
On a hearth by the crackling logs.

And I remember going to bed
Lulled to sleep by the falling rain,
The old tin roof captured every drop...
As if it were singing an old refrain.

And far away over a distant hill
A freight train passed in the night,
And the whistle moaned soft and low...
But...somehow that seemed all right.

There was a serenity to those sounds
And no matter how hard we fight,
The world will turn as time moves on...
To steal our peace and quiet.

But I wish once more I could hear
The whippoorwills sing at night,
And listen to the crickets on the hearth...
And recapture that peace and quiet.