as if it’s featherlight,
the great muscle of silence
lifts the weight of the moment
*
with invisible arms
silence plucks me from the noise,
raises me as an offering to the day
Posts Tagged ‘silence’
Two Hushes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged silence on December 16, 2023| 6 Comments »
Talking to My Son at Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, loss, mother, nothing, silence, son, stars on December 13, 2023| 9 Comments »
I miss you, I say to the stars,
The stars are not you,
but always they seem to listen,
as if what I have to say is important.
I miss you, I say again.
The stars never talk back.
Still, I listen for a response.
When I say I miss you,
I mean I’ve barely begun to understand
what missing you means.
Though I live it every day.
Though missing you infuses every breath.
Though missing you shapes me—
especially at night when I’m alone
and I find myself talking with stars.
I miss you, I say to the stars.
I hear nothing in response.
I let myself be cradled
by that nothing.
In a Circle of Trust
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged circle, communion, community, connection, silence, trust on December 9, 2023| 8 Comments »
I love these fierce and gentle hours
when the silence between us
blooms between voices
as deeply, as profusely
as the pale pink blossoms
that flourish in pavement cracks.
I did not know how much
I longed for this silence,
Did not know how the silence would honor
each voice the way a frame holds a portrait,
bringing value and beauty to the art inside,
didn’t know how shining it could be
with its infrangible truth,
how silence invites a deepening of self
the way a river deepens and changes the canyon,
even as the river itself is changed.
In This Tender Silence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, consolation, friendship, grief, Rilke, silence, song on December 5, 2023| 2 Comments »
Offer your beauty always without calculation or defense.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, “Initial,” trans. Mark S. Burrows
Oh friend, it’s true. These dark hours
can crumple us, can press.
No way to escape their crush.
How merciless it can be,
the fist of grief,
how strong the squeeze,
how difficult to believe
we’ll survive.
Today, it is enough
to offer the world
only the simplest song—
the wordless, tuneless
song of beingness.
How beautiful it is,
this offering,
your breath against my cheek.
One Inside the Blossoming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mystery, silence on September 26, 2023| 7 Comments »
though I tell you everything,
there is so much I don’t say—
the way an orchid
is nourished by shade,
the way silence is nourished by silence
Translation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged quiet, silence 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.
The Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, healing, life, silence on August 3, 2023| 11 Comments »
Outside the kitchen door,
your large green crocs sit, empty.
I slip my feet into them
and shuffle around the porch.
Life went on, I say to the air, to you.
I scuffle past the cinquefoil
with its plentiful yellow blooms,
shamble past the small and robust lilac bush
friends gave us after you died.
Look at all this life, I say to you,
to the air. It’s in everything.
It’s in me, too, this burgeoning.
And then I’m crying with the all of it—
the fierce sun and the blur of hummingbirds
and the ache in my chest and
the green in the field and
the terrible, wondrous truth—
Life goes on. For a long time,
I shuffle and talk to the air.
As always, your silence speaks back.
I listen to it beneath the rush
of the river, hear it beneath the birds,
sense it beneath the shush
of the wind in the grass.
Confession to Silence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged epistle, silence on July 6, 2023| 6 Comments »
I say I love you,
and then I start singing.
I say I want you,
and then I fill in
each moment
with conversation,
with stories, with music,
with the tap, tap, tap
of my antsy foot.
Silence, I come to your altar
with hymns, with prayers,
when all you ask of me
is that I come to you.
With this confession,
already I feel you
spreading through my body
like the scent after rain,
my cells opening to you,
you filling them with all
that glorious nothing.
For a Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, presence, refuge, silence on May 11, 2023| 9 Comments »
So keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Gregory Hays
And so tonight I travel
the back roads of self
to a place with no shovel,
no spoon, no pen,
no wheel, no stick,
and find there
the peace that arrives
when the idea of traveler
dissolves. And then the
road. And then the self.
From Six Hours Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, silence on March 30, 2023| 2 Comments »
for Joan Shearer
From six hours away,
she holds my hand.
Tonight when my ship
has no anchor, she meets
me in the waves and
floats with me there.
Not because I told her
I needed her. It’s more
that her soul is ever ready
to bob in the swells.
We drift. We say nothing,
but I don’t feel alone.
We’re alive in the silence
that weaves through all sound,
connected by the invisible
currents that govern whatever
is real. What is real: letting
another person feel what they feel.
And being there with them,
saying “I love being with you like this,”
sharing the fullness so present
even from six hours away.
Two Months after My Son Died
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged generosity, grief, light, Mirabai Starr, silence on March 26, 2023| 3 Comments »
for MS
She gave me an hour.
Since then, every minute
has grown from the soil
of that time.
She gave me silence.
It was the wisest teaching.
She did not know me.
She deeply understood my heart.
There was a time
when she, too,
was met with unthinkable loss.
Now she knows
to say the name
of the one who is gone.
She knows not to fix.
She knows the gift
of being seen.
She asked for nothing
in return.
Over a year later,
I remember how she listened
with her eyes.
I remember the generosity
of her gaze.
She lit a candle for my child,
a golden light
on a bed of amethyst.
With that flame,
she has lit hundreds more
through my hand.
Sometimes I wonder
where her flame began,
I think of all the hands
lighting all the candles.
How beautiful that light.
How far we have come
from the dark we have known.
What Silence Did Not Say
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letter, opening, silence on March 4, 2023| 8 Comments »
Silence did not say come sit with me.
Did not say I miss you. Did not wonder
where I have been. Silence did not
call me sweetheart, did not make
me promises, did not scold me
or scorn me or bid me closer in.
The invitation it sent was blank,
the most beautiful letter
ever not written.
I responded right away,
though it was, perhaps some time
before I noticed every part of me
was splaying like a lily, petal soft
and open beyond what the bud of me
dared to dream. And all around me,
the silence did not say good job,
did not say please stay, did not whisper
a word as I opened into it,
wider then wider.
On Prayer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged prayer, silence, sound, wayne muller on February 19, 2023| 12 Comments »
for Mark Primavesi
Prayer is what happens when we listen, and wait, beneath words, for the outline of heaven and earth to emerge.
—Wayne Muller, “Nourished by Prayer”
Today prayer is the silence
in the snow-deep meadow.
It’s the gurgle of the ice-choked river
that cannot be heard unless
I am completely still. Today,
prayer is not to, it’s not for,
it’s something I am
more than something I do.
Prayer is even the sound
of the logging trucks on the highway
as they brake rounding the corner.
It’s the rapid shush, shush, shush
of my skis in the track as I climb the hill.
It’s the sizzle of onions in the oil.
It’s the hitch in my breath before I cry.
I’m astonished, today, to find
there is nothing that isn’t prayer
when I am aware it’s an invitation
to be completely here, to open;
it’s a call to meet it all
with the love that asks nothing from me
except that I give it and receive it.
Every single thing can be prayer.
Even the siren blaring by.
Even my own familiar voice
as I listen into the silences
for whatever words come next.
To Everyone Who Beamed Me Love, But Felt Apologetic for Not Writing or Calling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, grief, love, silence, spaciousness, support on January 30, 2023| 22 Comments »
Now I know there is a sacred cathedral
made of unspoken love,
a most beautiful cathedral
built of generous silence,
a healing sanctuary created
by open hearts that reach out wordlessly.
I have been living in this cathedral
that your love built, and I am changed.
Now I trust loving silence
is a generous response
to another person’s pain.
When I am alone, I am not alone.
When you, in your own home,
open your hands as if in prayer,
I feel your hands holding me.
Your compassion touches me
the way light slips in through stained glass
to touch a face.
The pure hush of your hope
arrives in my heart like plainsong—
more breath than voice, as holy as any syllable.
Thank you for the ways your thoughtful silence
has lit in me thousands of candles
as I meet the darkest hours.
Now, I can’t unknow this: I trust love,
how it flourishes in the vast spaces
across miles, across time.
Such sweet, intense healing perfume—
like lilies on an altar—
the scent of your loving silence
as it opens me.
One Translation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, intimacy, love, silence on December 9, 2022| 2 Comments »
tide of your breath
the only poem
I need
One Midnight Rendezvous
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged night, silence on December 2, 2022| 4 Comments »
when the silence
waits for me to meet it,
how can I sleep?