approaching silence

we can say it with silence our native tongue - w.s.merwin

*

things falling away

arrayed yet ungraspable

slowly

the hand opens

the mind

stillness is

*

the heart realm

of all paths the home

crossings here and there

movement incessant

closures

none

*

in its fullness

just empty space

knows no hurdles

the heart

*

whose heart whispers here

in this mountain heat

bracing for winds

unflinching

*

everything opens up

is laid bare

before the rocks

before the sky

becomes breath

*

nightfall over the valley

echoes of footsteps on stony pathway

fading

maybe it's the bell ringing

waves loosened into the air

*

from the ridgetop

red moon

full

emerges

meeting you again

city lights shimmer

in the hazy distance

*

sitting together

to one another unknown

knowing put to rest

just days of silence

presence immeasurable

maybe time

maybe space

nothing needed

this is the beginning

of forgetting and

remembering

questions find peace in

the absence of answers

in what remains unresolved

released

become echoes

of silence

*

what you thought you

needed to leave behind to

freely walk through mirrors

but did not know is

already here at rest

at rest and

at home

dissolved in morning light

*

great absences

immaculate blue sky

the clouds

the clouds and the many things

leave us wordless

were we to listen enough

silence is what is here

everything else gone

nobel companion

to listening

*

silence is nowhere

abode to the mind

resting in that plenitude

unstirring

*

mind has nowhere to dwell

the time of an utterance

revisions itself as gleaming sea

wind swept surface of waters

the time of a breath

appears and disappears

this is us and

this is everything

*

a moment of silence

timeless

enshrines

long years of speech

*

is it this meeting

the still point

silence

where eternity

into infinity bleeds

*

we follow the trail of birds

into the scented evening

and our traces become

a hymne to silence

*

the world that is the other

found though here alone

is the shimmering of silence

*

to find it

one needs to step outside of it

no one can step outside of it

it is erasure of what divides

*

it cannot be found

it is radiance

what we call vastness is how it passes

from where to nowhere

light here

dark here

right here

*

in its wake

constellations

that distant murmur

*

late night

we are asleep

to draw cool water

dreams merge

at the mountain source

keeping vigil

the toads in the pond

let the darkness sing

*

just to sit

moment after moment

simplicity invites

present to what is

*

vastness

what is it

abundance

abundance of what is

alive

centro de retiros, karuna, monchique