You can't imagine a stillness that's not

The pine branches, bent sideways by wind, suggest I shut my eyes.

Shut your eyes and you shall see better.

Are you sad? You look so sad, I tell the trees.

We only look sad because you can't imagine a stillness that's not.

 
— from Rough Magic, by Lara Prior-Palmer

1.
What did we once say — that silence swallows and grows?

I'm still chasing both. The light, the light, streams through window, inching across bare floor, slipping through cracks and under doors. Turning gray to gold.

And then, the hunt for silence in which the light can grow. The plant you gave me one year ago is just now blooming, first flowers from a long suffering.

Don't you, too, hold your breath when the light arrives, fearful sound will shutter the calm, dim the glow? It's why we step outside in exclamation — what a beautiful day, we say, naming what we can't control.

2.
We travel to a big landscape with a dry, austere beauty. The days are pinecone quiet and we listen for birds and search for sheep along steep basalt cliffs. The nights are starry and immense. We see so much and nothing at all. Darkness turns everything meaningful and meaningless. 

In a small cabin, we dance to a song we've pressed through time. Of course, I cry — not a sob but a few silent tears. Of course I feel too much, more than the moment, a thousand days collected in this one. Maybe it’s relief, or shadow, or light, or a stillness that is not sad.

3.
The world whispers. We swallow light. Our stillness grows.

Surfacing

So much depends upon

morning light,

            its quiet presence

its pressing withdrawal.

So much depends upon

suppose and repose

how we stretch or

                        slow    

the angle of action,

the shine of almost.

— Drew Myron

* with a nod to Williams Carlos Williams
for the borrowed line, “so much depends.”

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