In stillness and silence

We had a morning.

We weren’t exactly on the same page. We didn’t fight, we almost never fight, we just rubbed at each other wrong. It happens.

The morning moved at a fast and grumpy pace. Then, after Bryan’s blood draw, we had about an hour before he was scheduled to see the oncologist and get hooked up for today’s infusion. An hour with nothing to do and no where to be.

My temptation was to fill it with words. We need to connect, to talk it out. But, I’d already tried and failed at that this morning. And I’m not as young as I used to be. Sometimes time is more important than words.

Tense and awkward, we walked outside and found a bench in the garden. We didn’t say much. We were quiet. Still. For roughly an hour we just sat together in our tiredness and anxiety, sat together with all our rough edges.

Slowly, something shifted.

I rubbed Bryan’s back, while I looked through Instagram and then read a Mary Oliver poem.

Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all of the voodoos of ambition sleep.
The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.
But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.
- Mary Oliver

Bryan shifted and laid down, resting his head in my lap while I continued to rub his back.

I wrote a poem, trying out an exercise I had heard of in which you intentionally try to copy the style of a poem from memory. It’s a practice in voice — getting past the fear of copying and stealing, past the fear of being unoriginal, in order to find your own voice.

Today, I’m letting ambition sleep,
setting it aside for stillness.

The wind plays on my skins.
The cactus beside me creeps
upward,
adding only centimeters.
It flowers one decade at a time.

A bird chirps on the green branch
of the Palo Verde.
Today, she gathers what she needs,
what she needs most —
a song,
a flight on the breeze.

Stillness is “the door to the temple.”
Stillness is the path to the alter.
Stillness and trust.
- Me