Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alabama, bird, meditation, pelican, poem, poetry, stillness on December 9, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The pelican dives
into the water,
rises again. Hovers.
Dives. Rises.
Each time, the water is quick
to forget the intrusion
loses its ripples,
stills. A thought
is a kind of a pelican.
A woman is a kind
of a bay. The pelicans
will always dive.
The bay will always
return to stillness.
A woman might
learn to live this way.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged erik satie, music, poem, poetry, quiet, stillness on November 17, 2019| Leave a Comment »
yet another poem inspired by this composition by Erik Satie
You wonder why I haunt you
like moonlight, why I come to you
like morning fog, dream thick and cool,
why I steep myself into your thoughts
like bergamot in black tea.
You wonder why I seldom leave you,
why I slip into your silences
the way rye darkly slips into bread.
It is my work to give you shivers,
make you tremble, make you still.
It is my work to make you fall in love
with the darkness inside yourself. It is my work
to be the unexpected black swan, and you,
it is your work to be the night pond.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, garden, meditation, poem, poetry, stillness, transformation on September 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, peace, poem, poetry, silence, stillness on February 14, 2019| 4 Comments »
Nothing happened today
as I sat for five minutes in the dark,
but all day I could feel the everywhere of it,
even as the car was sliding sideways down the hill,
even as my daughter wept, even as my singing group
laughed until we cried, I could feel it still there,
the silence that holds up all sound, the stillness
that cradles all motion, the peace that supports
every disaster, the blue sky behind the clouds.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged lake, meditation, poem, poetry, silence, stillness on July 31, 2018| 2 Comments »
If you watch the heron as it stalks
amongst the tall green reeds, then pauses,
and in its pausing disappears, then you understand
something of the power of stillness.
And if you, yourself, are still long enough
to see the head of the snapping turtle
rise between the lily pads,
then you glean something of the rewards
that come with sitting still.
But if you sit expecting such rewards,
then perhaps sit longer and watch the cattails
as they waver and still, sway and still and still,
and feel how the urge in you to say something rises
and softens and softens until there is nothing to say,
until that kind of stillness becomes
the greatest reward, until you feel
stillness hold you the way the lake
holds the lily pad, the way
the silence holds a song.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boredom, poem, poetry, stillness on May 9, 2018| 4 Comments »
I miss you. I miss your long
minutes, your interminable hours,
your days that promised never to end.
What became of your
afternoons full of nothing?
Your yawning mornings?
Our weekends on the couch?
I remember how you once
wrapped your arms around me
and I thought you meant forever.
I believed in your quiet loyalty,
how still you were, not even
the curtains moved.
Now, even the moon is in a rush,
sprinting across the stars.
Now every single thing
has some song to sing.
The day hurls around
its confident light
and the minutes strut
around in berets and shout
into their megaphones.
Look, I’ve saved a place
for you at my table.
Please come. I don’t
remember what you look like,
but if you just hold me,
I’ll know it’s you come home,
I’ll know.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged contentment, meditation, poem, poetry, stillness on October 3, 2016| 1 Comment »
that after years of driving past a place
on your way to somewhere else, this time
you stop. You find yourself sitting
beneath a scrappy tree as the shadows
make their daily rounds. The breeze stirs,
then forgets itself. The clouds balloon,
then disappear. The cars on the highway
continue their journey toward somewhere.
And you sit. What a relief to go nowhere.
What a gift to have nothing to say.
The winds of your thoughts bluster
and go away. An ant makes its way
to the top of a grass blade then makes
its way back down. The snow
that arrived on the peaks yesterday
melts by noon into the ground.
Where do you think you need to go?
You say, “There,” and the world says, “Here.”
There is cricket song all around you.
Gold tang of rabbit brush rouses the air.
Sometimes it happens this way: you stop.
And the world arrives at your chair.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dance, poem, poetry, stillness on April 19, 2016| 1 Comment »
At the still point of the turning world; neither flesh nor fleshless
—T. S. Eliot, from The Four Quartets
Waltzing in the kitchen,
I ask the sauté pan to dance.
It is an awkward affair,
neither of us is really sure
of the steps, neither of us
knows if the other is leading.
In the end, I curtsey. The sauté pan
retires to the stove top
and says nothing. There
is no applause. The music
that was not playing
continues not to play.
The deer in the grass
who did not turn to watch
the strange dance in the house
continue to eat the lawn,
which I know by tomorrow
will seem taller, though
I have never seen it grow.
In me, something so still.
I struggle to name it,
say “nothing,” and I bow
to the nothing, know it as true,
then it changes its name
to “everything.”
There is so much
I don’t understand.
On the stove, the butter
skitters across the pan.
It smells salty, sweet.
The pan and I are partners again.
I lift it by the handle
and swirl it slowly,
then return it to the grate.
I don’t dare be still now,
lest the butter burn.
Whatever is still in me
remains very, very still
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, silence, stillness, surrender on January 7, 2013| 3 Comments »
Silence
I am tired
of evading
you.
Was that
your plan
all along,
to outwait me,
knowing
that sooner
or later
after all that
one-sided
conversation
and rumpus
I’d need a drink
of water
and take
by sweet accident
a sip
of you.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mountain sheep, moving, poem, poetry, stillness on December 27, 2012| 2 Comments »
First I thought
it a piece of cliff
tumbled
onto the highway,
but then became
visible four short legs,
then the horns,
the dark wool. But
it did not move,
not one inch,
as I passed it
going west,
passed it wishing
I were not so quick
in my travels,
wishing I could
stand on the road
and forget it was
a road.
