A Poem: Hush

Hush,
it’s like climbing back into the womb.
This search for silence.
It’s like seeing how everything circles in,
the gulls at dusk,
the tide,
the galaxies,
showing us how to spiral

far, inwards,
so that the slow train wreck
we were becoming is halted,
stopped in its tracks,
by the realisation
that halting,
turning, curling,
is a self-protective arc.

The curling of the turtle
beneath its rib bone shell.
A bird’s young tucked
under wings.
The earth journeying
away from the sun.

The horse lying down
before rain,
and the cat purring,
clawing at a warm
rugged up lap.

Hush,
as there is no longer need
of lists,
or counting of regrets,
omissions.
There is only tonight,
the very silence
echoing the void
before the earth was formed.

The silence before the beginning.
And everything is always
readying itself to begin.
Although
it doesn’t look like readiness,
and so often
feels more like rest,
or the brushing away of tears.

Or hopes dashed,
reimagined,
tentatively reestablishing themselves
in the dark—
the dark of an earth
full circling, hanging,
and leaving
for a moment,
the sun at her back.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
June 2022

~~~~~~~~

And yes, I found the below holy, perfect poem after writing my own.

LIKE A HOLY FACE
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Only as a child am I awake
and able to trust
that in every fear and every night
I will behold you again.

However often I get lost,
however far my thinking strays,
I know you will be here, right here,
untouched by time.

To me it is as if I were at once
infant, boy, man and more.
I feel that only as it circles
is abundance found.

I thank you, deep power
that works me ever more lightly
in ways I can’t make out.
The day’s labor grows simple now,
and like a holy face
held in my dark hands.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And then this:

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.
From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.

Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill—
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.

—Charles Simic
The Voice at 3 A.M.