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Posts Tagged ‘stillness’

Still to Come

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.

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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.

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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.

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Nada

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.

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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.

 

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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.

 

 

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sitting with flowers in the garden

until I am

flower in the garden

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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.

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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.

 

 

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Dear Boredom,

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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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.

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Only the Dance

 

 

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

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Still Rambling

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.

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Chance

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.

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And That’s All

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.

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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.

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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.

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The lilies were orange. They boy in blue
sat in the middle of them, as if by being
still enough he might disappear and become

orange lily. The sky wore its grayest dress
for midday, and all around us people
were moving, quickly, from here to there.

One man chided him for sitting in the flowers.
Most ignored the boy and looked instead
at me as if to say, Aren’t you going to get

the boy out of the lilies? I didn’t. I wandered
around and made embellished pretense
of looking for the boy. We both knew I knew

where he was. Yoo hoo. Yoo hoo, I said
to the scarlet gilia, the lupine pods
twisted and brown, the golden currents.

Yoo hoo. And the boy sat still as the center
of the watch dial. Who could say
how long he might have been a lily

if I had not suddenly turned
into one of them, the rushing ones, reminding
him that it was time to go, now, I mean now,

the lilies, I forgot to smell them as I plucked
the boy out of the garden and pulled him
onto the path.

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blue heron
so still in the sky
my heart beats
faster than
its wings

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inside that sigh
migrate a thousand thousand
butterflies

*

what’s quiet
is still quiet behind
the barking dog

*

I fall asleep
aware of part of me watching
the one who sleeps

*

these arms
not reaching
but waving

*

poor woman
stopping long enough to smell
the juniper berries
only because
she has to pee

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