wind that tears
the limbs from the trees—
what is still, still still
Posts Tagged ‘stillness’
One in the Center
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged stillness, wind on July 8, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Still to Come
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged quiet, self talk, stillness on July 2, 2020| 5 Comments »
There will be a time when I will sit quietly
on the chair and feel no urgency to rise, to rush.
Won’t feel the crush of the unfinished list,
won’t feel late, overdue, behind. I may not
even know the time, won’t fear the tick of the clock
as an adversary. Perhaps I’ll even close my eyes
and lean back and let my limbs soften
like honey warmed in the sun.
An idea might come, but I’ll not try to capture it.
This isn’t laziness, no part of me will think so.
No, I’ll revel in the slowness, the unhurried day.
And I’ll remember, perhaps, a time when the ticking
felt like a bomb inside me. Where did it go,
I might wonder, as I pour myself another cup of tea,
the scent of bergamot citrusy and bright.
Pulling Off I-70 Between Grand Junction and Denver
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, quietude, solitude, stillness on June 24, 2020| 5 Comments »
I want to linger at the side of the road
where the dark birds sing into the eddies of dawn,
yes linger in the low-angled light, in the big-hearted shadow
that blankets this bend in the canyon. Though I have many
miles to drive before I arrive, let me stay here
a while beside the river, still for a willowy moment, the water
the only thing moving. How many landscapes do I pass
without meeting them? How many worlds do I miss
as I rush from one here to the next? Oh bless this
quiet, where there is no hum of highway, no rumble,
no center line, no blur. Why do I so seldom linger,
my bones full of rush and current. In this moment,
I remember how deeply I love the stillness of rocks
that haven’t moved for a thousand years, the calm
of the dirt that has nowhere, nowhere to go.
It Takes (Almost) Everything
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, stillness, wind on June 15, 2020| 2 Comments »
The wind, every day now, the
wind, the wind, the clamorous
wind, it lifts my dress and whips
my hair, the riotous wind, it
steals my words, unwinds my thoughts, the
demanding wind, the wilding wind, wind
that spreads fire, wind that unbranches the
cottonwood trees, the wind, the wind unlayers
me, invites me to find someplace still in me,
the wind, the relentless wind.
Nada
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged music, nothing, silence, stillness on February 29, 2020| 4 Comments »
written at the Carmelite Monastery in Crestone, CO
It holds everything, silence,
offers itself as a blank staff
on which every song is written—
the tiny hymn of insect wings,
the baritone of the jet as it flies
from one measure of sky to the next,
the dry requiem of rustling grass,
the emphatic chorus of crow.
How generous, silence,
am I willing to know it?
How it includes even the cough,
the belch, retching, the wailing,
the snarl, the scream, the shatter,
and scores these in concert with the hum,
the lush purr, the whisper of the lover,
the ecstatic tremulo of sigh.
There is no sound it refuses to hold.
Its patience is infinite.
So when we, like weary pilgrims,
tired of hearing the percussion
of our own footsteps, arrive at its doors,
silence receives us, welcomes us home.
Instead of Getting Riled
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.
The Gnoissienne 2 Speaks
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.
One Freedom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, garden, meditation, poem, poetry, stillness, transformation on September 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I Finally Understood Why I Meditate
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.
Beside the Lake, A Note to Self
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.
Dear Boredom,
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.
Sometimes it happens this way,
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.
Only the Dance
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
Still Rambling
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.
Chance
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.
And That’s All
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged lily, poem, poetry, presence, stillness on December 1, 2012| 2 Comments »
Five pink lilies,
petals splayed,
more perfume
in the room
than one nose
can take in.
Sometimes
the mind
reaches for more—
one more hour,
one more kiss,
one more cookie,
one more glimpse,
one more oh,
it goes on, but
tonight
the scent
of five open lilies,
the scent
of five
pink lilies.
Stillness, I Say I Want You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, paradox, poem, poetry, silence, spirituality, stillness on October 17, 2012| 3 Comments »
Stillness, I say I want you.
Pond with no wrinkle. Hanging
leaf with no breeze. Mind with
no wheel of thought.
I say please teach me and then
rail against you. Squirm and reach
and whirl. In the quiet field,
I make of myself a wind.
In the silent blue room, I sing.
I climb the balcony with a tambourine
instead of sitting in the garden below.
Stillness, how I rub against you.
The heat builds the longer I sit.
I am sand paper against you. I am
bell. I am red. I am mint. Stillness,
the teachers say you are here
beneath the veils of do and must.
I listen and think I know what they mean.
I turn you into a thought. Stillness,
you leak through this carrying on.
Stillness, I wrestle myself till I sweat.
I shout your name, Stillness, as if
you were deaf. Stillness,
where are you? And where are you not?
The dawn and the night move with you.
I keep bumping against, what?
Oh Stillness, I’m laughing. There you
were in the question, but I went on
with my wondering, my want.
Long Time Coming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aspen, autumn, change, evolution, fall, poem, poetry, stillness on September 17, 2012| 5 Comments »
Just this morning
the leaves were green
in this stand of aspen
that now flash gold—
it happens that fast,
though of course
there is nothing
quick about it.
It took a whole season
to grow the leaf
and nurture it into
brilliance. And
it took decades
to grow the tree that grew
the leaf. And what
of evolution? Oh patience.
Perhaps this is why
on the woman who’s finally learning
how to sit still beside the leaves
there’s a bit of salt water
sliding down her skin.
the mastery of the thing tanka
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, heron, poem, stillness, tanka, unity on May 19, 2012| 6 Comments »
blue heron
so still in the sky
my heart beats
faster than
its wings