Stillness surrounds the runner
as she bends down to tie the blue laces.
And as the runner closes the screen door
with a bang, stillness is beneath the sound.
It envelops the empty railroad track
that stretches beside the woman. It contains
the tch tch tch of her feet as they
scuff the loose gravel of the country road.
Stillness surrounds the green tractor
that passes her. Stillness is still. It holds
space for the lizard that darts. It is inside
and all around the runner as she moves past
the neighbor’s drive, the long row
of mailboxes, the mile after mile
of dirt and weed and puddles drying up.
Stillness watches the runner’s thoughts
as they pass like a sit com across
the scrim of her mind. It watches
the stream of wonder, anger, relief,
sorrow and defensiveness as it
courses through her and is gone.
And on the runner’s way home,
stillness is there. And the runner,
though moving yet through the cliffs
and tamarisk, is also increasingly
aware of how everything falls away—
her breath, the rocks, the thoughts, the sounds—
and once or twice, perhaps she glimpses
what is all around, what she can’t run past,
through the cracks in everything she knows,
and how the less she holds, the less
she grasps, the more still, the more
still she feels, she sees, the more still.