Each time the cat leaps up
onto the bed, she makes
a small bright sound.
I love this sound. Love knowing
that soon her warm weight
will curl into or on top of my belly.
It’s addictive as the chime
of an incoming text.
Seductive as short sleeves
and the firm curve of biceps.
My greatest achievement—
more prized than title or degree—
is when my cat finds me
worthy of being her resting place.
I soften then. Allow. I thrive.
Become creature. Become
purr-being. Trust-cushion.
A reverent stillness. I become
one who will still for love.
Posts Tagged ‘stillness’
Self-Portrait as Cat Pillow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged achievement, cat, comfort, stillness on February 15, 2026| 9 Comments »
After Reaching for You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, memory, stillness on December 20, 2025| 6 Comments »
for Finn
There was a list. We were laughing.
This is all I remember as first light
enters the windows, slips
somehow through closed lids.
I keep my eyes closed in hopes
that if I am still enough I can grasp
an image tendril of the dream
and tug it closer.
For hours, it doesn’t work.
When I stop reaching, what is here
are real memories of you—your
head bent over the table doing math,
how jealous you were of your sister’s
snowman stuffy, the way your feet hung
over the end of almost every bed.
Is it true all I had to do was stop reaching
for the dream so that whole skeins
of memories could unravel and wrap
me in their long, faithful strands?
Is it true being still is now the best
way I can hold you? I am still.
Somehow in the softening, I don’t feel
your hand here in my open hand, but I do.
Six Weeks After I Break My Foot
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ache, pain, stillness, teaching on May 24, 2025| 2 Comments »
It still hurts. Not like it did at first,
of course. But still. One slight change
in angle can cause a sharp zing
that brings me to stillness.
Perhaps this is the day when
I don’t resent the pain.
Perhaps this is the day
I embrace how pain belongs
to this life as much as joy,
I imagine pain is like the strict
third-grade teacher I didn’t
love at the time, but years later,
I thank for holding a line.
If there is a way to appreciate struggle
in this very moment and not wait
for the future when I see the struggle
has been good for me, well, I don’t
yet understand it. But I do know
that stillness has never come so easily
to me as it does today when, again,
I feel the ache and discover just how
lovely it is to sit here, to not move an inch,
to watch the green swallows as they fly.
Inner Acreage
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inner world, intention, stillness on December 20, 2024| 3 Comments »
There are caves there where
I can rest without light
and radiant meadows
with room to expand
in every direction
They’re not real, of course.
Nor is the wasteland.
The glorious abyss.
Which is to say nothing
could be more real
than these inner landscapes
that always receive me,
whether I’m on a bus
or in line at the market
or lying in bed before dawn.
Sometimes I forget
the inner world is there. I start
believing only in the outer world.
How exhausting life is then.
But when I remember
to live through the gate
of intention, when I still,
it’s as if I am being breathed,
being lived. I’m out of the way.
Then everything is the way.
It may not always be pleasant.
It’s always exactly as it is.
There are no words there,
but look at me, trying anyway
to explain this nothing to do
and nowhere to go
and nothing to experience
which is everything.
I’m like a traveler trying to take
a dozen photos to represent
a whole country, only to discover
they’re all blank.
Like a child in a fairy tale
trying to leave a trail to get back,
only to have the crumbs
disappear.
Inner Dance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, dance, paradox, stillness on October 26, 2024| 8 Comments »
Dancing inside me is the one
who has spent her whole life dancing,
the one who leaps up
the moment the music begins
and starts to twirl and leap
and give herself over to moving
in any way her feet
and arms and shoulders and spine
want to move. Sometimes
she needs no music at all,
just moves for the wild joy of moving.
She is just starting to notice
the other woman inside,
the one who looks more
as if she’s standing still.
The one who whose movements rhyme
with limestone, whose eyes are clear
as deep mountain lakes.
Only recently has she
begun to see
this, too, is
dancing.
For When I’m Rushing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged busy-ness, peace, stillness, sunflower on September 8, 2024| 5 Comments »
Amidst the sunflowers
in full flagrant flowering,
I, too, begin to sprout
fat orange petals
and feel my head heavy
with growing seeds.
My mind becomes sun-drunk
and I gold and I spiral.
This is why you might see me
standing still in the garden
amongst the thick stalks,
though there is much to do.
Some animals freeze
as an instinct to survive,
and that may be true of me, too,
but I am not still out of fear.
Stillness saves me
not because I hide,
but because peace
seems to find me more
easily then and the body
unclenches and becomes
a blooming thing that lives
for the sake of blooming
right here where it’s planted.
Impossible Task
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged stillness, tree on July 21, 2024| 8 Comments »
For two hours this morning
I practiced being a tree.
Sat in one place in the sun
and did not move. Offered
shade to ground below.
Did not speak. Did not plan.
And though no bird chose
to nest in my lap, was not
averse to such nesting.
Imagined eating light.
To anyone else, it looked
like a woman sitting on
a wooden chair. Need
to keep practicing before
even coming close to
the proficiency of that
spindly crooked spruce
over there.
The Day You Took My Picture Was the Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being with, happiness, pond, stillness on March 9, 2024| 7 Comments »
I sat by the pond and watched
the blue dragonflies land
on slender green reeds.
And the sun was warm and
the air was still as I was still,
which is to say the air pulsed
with aliveness and so did I.
If someone could see the picture
from that day, they might think
I was sad. No slip of a smile
touches my lips. My glance
is far off, unfocused.
But I was in a place beyond
happiness, a place of being with,
a place that asks nothing of me
except that I forget everything
but sitting beside the pond
and marveling at blue dragonflies
as they weave and land,
the reeds so slender, so green.
Still Changing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, grief, move, stillness, story on December 19, 2023| 7 Comments »
How seldom he was still,
more humaning than human,
more aliving than alive.
Mostly he was running
or jumping or lunging.
Mostly he was spinning
or flopping or dodging.
Even as he sat,
which he seldom did,
his leg was pumping,
his fingers fidgeting.
But there were times,
like when we snuggled on the couch
to read books,
when his whole body quieted
as if to better listen
to the story,
as if he was captive
to the characters’ struggles,
every cell of him rapt
to know what came next.
Now I see how active
a stillness can be,
how far he was moved
when he was motionless,
how even now as I sit here
still as his tombstone,
I am spellbound
by the still changing story
of his life—
how because I am still
all of me is moved,
until I’m a new woman
sitting in the same place.
Sitting Quietly in the Night for Twenty Minutes while Nothing Happens
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, nothing, quiet, sign, stillness 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.