Stillness, I say I want you.
Pond with no wrinkle. Hanging
leaf with no breeze. Mind with
no wheel of thought.
I say please teach me and then
rail against you. Squirm and reach
and whirl. In the quiet field,
I make of myself a wind.
In the silent blue room, I sing.
I climb the balcony with a tambourine
instead of sitting in the garden below.
Stillness, how I rub against you.
The heat builds the longer I sit.
I am sand paper against you. I am
bell. I am red. I am mint. Stillness,
the teachers say you are here
beneath the veils of do and must.
I listen and think I know what they mean.
I turn you into a thought. Stillness,
you leak through this carrying on.
Stillness, I wrestle myself till I sweat.
I shout your name, Stillness, as if
you were deaf. Stillness,
where are you? And where are you not?
The dawn and the night move with you.
I keep bumping against, what?
Oh Stillness, I’m laughing. There you
were in the question, but I went on
with my wondering, my want.
This is excellent as a lively meditation on such a huge abstraction as stillness.
The “I am” sequence is particularly nice, and the ending is superb with one note: of course you discover stillness at the end of the ending question, after the “what?” But you end the poem shortly after that, so you didn’t (excuse the grammar) “but I went on” unless you perhaps also turn the opening statement into a question, or perhaps switch the past tense of “went on…” to “go on…”
Hey friend … I was thinking of the questions about 3/4 of the way through … Where are you, where are you not. But hmmm … Since that is not clear, I will rethink it! Great feedback! r
…or perhaps it’s stillness in the sense of remaining the same, not lack of movement or whatnot—as in, “still human.”