The tweet and twitter at dusk, completed,
And the swallows vanished,
And griefs of the sky,
The griefs of sky, too, disappeared…
The moon, and
Moon, contained
The dark orbit of bats
In song-less songs that I could not hear.
And yet in the quiet of
My solitude, remaining still,
Remaining and standing still,
Something dwelled:
A tweet and twitter of unheard song,
The creak of wings,
As bats dodged my body.
Standing still is the trick;
Being still, stillness,
Is the trick to mindful presence.
Benjamin Green is the author of eleven books including The Sound of Fish Dreaming (Bellowing Ark Press, 1996). At the age of sixty-seven, he hopes his new work articulates a mature vision of the world and does so with some integrity. He resides in Jemez Springs, New Mexico.
