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Posts Tagged ‘quiet’

Between Calls

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 23, 2024| 4 Comments »


 
 
I walk out the door and
lie on the ground and
let the earth hold me,
let the sun soak me
let breath do
what breath does.
And if there is any
part of me that doesn’t know
it is part of everything,
it is lost in the vast peace
that fills me when
everything warms
and the kingfisher flies
over my silence
with his clackclackclack
and the air smells of river
and greening grass.
It doesn’t last,
but for this small eternity,
I am what a wind is,
only more, only less.

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Beyond Quiet

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 24, 2024| 6 Comments »


 
 
From bare branch to bare branch
Clark’s nutcrackers weave the dry tick
of their call through morning—
as if sticks are rattling,
as if stones are clattering—
and whatever part of me
that is longing for quiet
is invited into the racket.
I say I want peace,
but what the heart really wants
is to know itself
as part of everything,
to belong to the world
of grinding and trilling,
scolding and chattering,
to knit itself into this raucous day,
strident and so alive.
 

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Make Over

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 4, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
Mom and I apply the thin film
of the facial masks,
mine pomegranate, hers cherry,
and I laugh at our images in the mirror,
the strange pearly gel sticking to our skin.
We find a sunny spot in the room
and for twenty minutes we lie there,
eyes closed, holding hands.
The package claims my skin will become
more hydrated, softer.
In truth, all of me is softer
as I give in to the slowness,
give in to the quiet, give in
to low warm light and let myself
be wholly here with my mom
as the masks make us look ridiculous
and the whole rest of the world
more beautiful.

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Letter to Myself in the Future

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 11, 2023| 6 Comments »

I want to give you this quiet hour
spent outside in the winter sun,
the slipknot of the breeze almost not there,
the sky an incandescent blue,
the river a murmur in its growing ice,
the dried grass barely a rustle.
How warm it is, even midwinter.
What I most want to give you
is not this hour, but the memory
of how you said yes to it,
how you set aside the phone,
how you turned off the screen,
how you let the book stay on the shelf
and did not touch the piano keys.
Remember sweetheart, how it felt
to slip between the cracks of the day
right into the fullness of being,
how you were so welcomed
by the air, by the light.
You could do it again,
slide out of your self.
Become wind.
Become the light.

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Translation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on September 22, 2023| 15 Comments »


 
In a quiet house
a woman can have
quiet thoughts,
can sit in the quiet
and let the quiet
inside. In a quiet house,
a woman can sit
on the couch
in a quiet room
and watch the leaves
out the window
as they do not move
in the wind
that is not there.
How quiet it is,
the kind of deep quiet
that makes a woman
slip into the quiet
as if it’s inevitable,
and the quiet seeps in
and fills her the way
water seeps quietly
into the sand,
and the house is quiet
and the air is quiet
and the woods are quiet
and the world is quiet
and the woman is quiet
until she rhymes
with quiet,
until she becomes
the attention
that meets the quiet
and the quiet
becomes her.
 

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Sitting Quietly in the Night for Twenty Minutes while Nothing Happens

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 11, 2023| 8 Comments »


Perhaps I wanted a sign—
an owl call. A meteor.
The brush of an invisible hand.
Instead, I got a sky full of stars
and an ear full of riversong
and the certainty that no matter
what happens or does not happen
in the world outside of me,
there is always, inside me,
a love that grows and changes.
Is it strange now, I am grateful
for nothing—the nothing
that teaches me
the most important thing of all.  

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Yin

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 21, 2023| 13 Comments »

            after an hour of yoga with Erika Moss
 
 
Curled on the earth
like a small animal,
I bury my nose in the grass
and breathe in the surprising sweetness
of spring green and purple bloom
and soil still damp from last night’s rain,
and though my eyes are closed
the desert sun enters anyway,
infusing my inner world
with radiance, with red.
There are so many ways
I work to hold myself up,
but in this soft moment,
I notice how nothing
is asked of me and how,
when I am still,
the world I might ignore
invites itself in.
 
There is such a thing,
says my friend,
as the back of the heart.
It is, she says, like the dark side
of the moon.
I honor that dark side,
that quiet, shadowy terrain
that is no less necessary,
no less true for being dim.
There will be a time to unfurl,
to open, to shine, to rise,
but in this charmed interval,
I sink deeper, deeper
into what is cool,
what is quiet,
what is beyond my knowing.
The interval builds a nest around me.
I do nothing and feel
how I am held.

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One Peacefulness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on January 1, 2023| 8 Comments »

so quietly this new year
slips through midnight—
our breath the most precious of cheers

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May 19, 2021

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 19, 2021| 6 Comments »




Will I remember this day with its greening of grass,
its blooming of apple blossom, its stilling of pond?
Will I remember the sweetness of my daughter
not leaving the house for school on a Wednesday
because her classes are all online? Will I remember
how she comes to snuggle on the couch during lunch
and pinches my cheeks and teases me about my ugly feet?
Will I remember the terrible yellow sticky casings
of the cottonwood seeds, how they glue to the hood
of my car that rarely moves from the drive? Or
the lavender in the garden that always looks
grey and dead before it erupts into fragrant life?
Perhaps there is some wave of presence
that will carry such stillness forward, a current
of quiet, a tide of tenderness that will insist
on itself for years to come. How forgettable
it all is—and how cherished—this swooping of swallows,
this opening of iris. How necessary, this holding
my daughter while the dark pool of night curls around us,
this cradling each other as we say nothing at all.  

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One Silencing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »

unsure what to say—

letting the blank page

write on me

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