BE STILL:
Learning from Stillness
not clenched in fear, nor closed in grief,
but breathing like balm through bending boughs
of ageless, whispering pines,
where sacred silences have been sown
before the shaping tongue of names.
Be still—
like moonlight milked on midnight waters,
silver, seamless, softly spread,
while starry seas slide soundlessly
through heaven’s hollow hand.
Be still as a fresh snowfall
sleeping in winter fields.
Each feathered flake a small vow,
each hush a holy layering
gentleness laid down, deep on deep,
layer by luminous layer.
Be still as stones in patient streams,
time-rounded, tempered, smoothed of edge;
their sharpness given up to years,
their silence slowly learned,
till yielding turns to lasting strength
and quiet ripens into peace.
Be still, and feel
the unseen nearness gathering:
a mantle warming weary shoulders,
a vast and vigilant listening,
a tender gravity drawing you inward,
calling you home to yourself.
For stillness is not empty—
it is a hidden garden,
a well where whispered wonders wake.
A door veiled in quiet
through which the heart remembers
the sound of its own name.
Be still—now listen, wholly, deep:
not only wit ear, but breath and bone.
Peace does not pass like a passing wind;
it waits, as starlight waits—
steadfast beyond the restless world—
until your inner sky
grows wide and hushed enough
to hear it sing.
The final lines of the poem lingered in the quiet room, leaving a stillness that Juanita was slow to break. Juanita paused thoughtfully, her fingers tracing the edge of the poem as she gathered her thoughts. "This reminds me of some of the poems of Christopher Cranch," she said at last, her voice soft but reflective.
Jack glanced up. "Christopher who?"
"Cranch," she repeated, leaning back slightly. “A minor nineteenth-century New England poet and painter. Not widely read now.” A faint, knowing smile crossed her face. "He lived in the shadow of Emerson and Whitman and echoed them in some ways. Cranch had a lot of talent, but history tends to flatten quieter voices."
Jack let out a slow breath and returned his gaze to the poem. His brow furrowed as though he were trying to decipher an unfamiliar map.
"Hm. This poem baffles me," he admitted, shaking his head slightly. "This whole idea of telling someone to ‘be still’ strikes me as strangely coercive. It feels more like a command and less like an invitation. " Juanita tilted her head but didn’t interrupt. "Shouldn’t stillness just… happen?"” Jack went on. “If you have to tell someone to be still, doesn’t that defeat the point?” The room held his question without answering it.
Then, from the corner of the room, Shu’s low chuckle drifted through the air. He wore a crooked, almost mischievous smile, as though he had been waiting for someone to voice exactly that objection. "All literature is a little perverse," he said.
Then, from the far corner, came a low, amused chuckle. Shu had been leaning back in his chair, half in shadow, his expression unreadable until now. A crooked smile pulled at one side of his mouth. "All literature bends the natural order a little," he said. "That’s part of its charm."
Jack frowned faintly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
"It means," Shu replied, leaning forward, “that no one needs to be told to breathe either— but we still write poems about it.” His eyes flicked briefly to the page. "Language doesn’t just describe experience. It provokes it."