Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘silence’

And Then, All at Once, Song

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 18, 2025| 8 Comments »




in the barren cottonwood tree
dozens of birds, all of them still,
as if, like me, they are enthralled
doubtful they could ever improve
on all this glorious silence

Read Full Post »

On This Day Twenty Years After You Were Born

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 12, 2024| 15 Comments »

 
 
I dug in the garden. For hours.
Hands deep in the dirt
where once your hands
dug, too. Pulled carrots.
Potatoes. Onions.
Held them up to the air
and marveled at what grows
in the dark. Asked you questions.
As always, you didn’t answer.
Or perhaps it’s truer to say
I do not know how
to interpret the language
of rain, the message
of the white seed that landed
in my hand, the significance
of the hummingbird moth
drinking from bright red nasturtiums.
But I am learning the language of silence.
Same language the earth speaks.
Same language we spoke while you
were still forming inside me. Such
an intimate tongue. Such generous
conversation. All day I practice
speaking it with you. All day
I practice listening.

Read Full Post »

While Singing “Parting Glass”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 6, 2024| 10 Comments »


                  for D
 
I spent years
practicing how
to make my voice
disappear
inside hers
so we’d blend—
and though
it’s been a year
since we sang,
it’s only weeks
since she’s gone,
and how strange now
to open my mouth,
to listen for her,
to hear only
myself. And I
can’t stop singing
because it makes
me feel closer
to her to hear
where her voice
would be,
almost like
silence
is now harmony.

Read Full Post »

Beneath All Sound

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 21, 2024| 4 Comments »


 
Emptying my eyes.
Opening my hands.
 
Not answering the phone.
Not answering the door.
Not even stroking the cat
when she nudges her nose
against my neck.
 
Not trying to answer
any question of why.
Rising of chest. Falling
of chest. Listening to the tide
of breath. Listening.
 
Attending to silence. Noticing
how silence attends to me.

Read Full Post »

Hallelujah

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 18, 2024| 3 Comments »


 
 
after singing in the stadium
with fifty thousand other voices
emerging into the night
to find my own ecstatic
silence

Read Full Post »

The Waking

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 16, 2024| 8 Comments »

When I wake, it’s your silence
beside me that invites me
to wake into my own silence,
and I begin the day with listening.
By heart I know the difference
between the quiet of your sleep
and the quiet of you dreaming.
and it is by tuning to the gentle
hinge of your breath that I
relearn my place in the world.
Even before my eyes are open
I greet the dawn-drenched day,
not with an alarm but through a doorway
of trust. How quietly opening happens.

Read Full Post »

Spelunking of the Soul

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 2, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
 
I woke in the cave of my heart,
a slim shadow nested inside
an unbounded shadow,
and there, after decades of chatter
and prattle, I found you, silence.
Or more truly, after my clanging
and crying, my praising and soothing,
silence found me.
Quiet comforter.
Place of no promises.
Infinite cradle. Infinite womb.
An endless invitation to wake
forever.
I woke in the cave of my heart
being tuned to join a song I knew
but had never been taught,
a song ringing inside every cell.
Whatever I’d thought
was my own voice was one silken thread
in a warp made of silence,
a weft made of song.
I met there all the beauty I could bear.
Is it here even now as I sit in my room
with the low hum of lights
and the long list of things to do?
I close my eyes,
empty my pockets of certainty,
listen for what is real.
 

Read Full Post »

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.

Read Full Post »

Growing Trust

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 29, 2024| 2 Comments »




Inside this silence
with its hum of life
and shush of wind
is another silence,
a pure silence
I have never heard
but trust is here—
the foundation
of all sound—
just as I trust that
inside my imperfect
love with its pride
and its pain is another
love—a pure and
generous love.
Sometimes when
the voices of hate
in and around me
are loudest, I feel
my understanding
of what trust is adjust—
the way trees in winter
continually adapt to keep
their vital cells alive,
the way animals deep
in the dark of the ocean
keep evolving
to make their own light.

Read Full Post »

After the Long Silence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 11, 2024| 14 Comments »

harmony opens in me
the doors of forgiveness,
just a sliver—
then it dissolves
the idea of a door

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »