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Quiet,
dear soul,
dear soul,
spiraling
through a palace
of angels --
their thundering,
bidding heartbeats,
their lightning glances
and their blinding,
stair-stepping
feathery flames.
Come out
their thundering,
bidding heartbeats,
their lightning glances
and their blinding,
stair-stepping
feathery flames.
Come out
to the empty field
in the cool morning
and listen
to nothing,
no voice,
no song,
no sound
and almost no
wind
in the cool morning
and listen
to nothing,
no voice,
no song,
no sound
and almost no
wind
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Beautiful images. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad to meet you on that field.
ReplyDeleteMuch of this poem seems to speak to me from my very own personal mythology … Perhaps it is a shared mythology after all. Are you sure you wrote it, Ruth? Or just took down the dictation you heard out there in the empty field? ;)
ReplyDeleteYes, to listen in that empty field, to truly, truly listen to the “nothing that is not there and the nothing that is” as in those ineffaceable last lines of the Wallace Stevens poem you so love and that seem to whisper in the almost non-existent wind. A beautiful, arresting poem. The last bit, “and almost no wind” is so evocative. Is there almost no wind outside or inside the poetess? Or is the poem telling us that such distinctions no longer have any meaning?
Lovely poem and I like the photo too.
ReplyDeleteWonderful, Ruth! I could see you walking across that empty field in the lovely photo, and I know that, in listening to nothing — no voice, no song, no sound, and almost no wind — you heard the echo of something timeless, wordless, and reassuring.
ReplyDeleteI am enamored of quiet. Sometimes, sitting at home when Dr. M is working late, I pause & think - music? tv? Nah - I like to hear my thoughts...
ReplyDeleteThank you for this poem. I printed it out and put it on the fridge for now--a reminder to quiet myself. I opened the kitchen window to let in the blanketed quiet of the woods after yesterday's storm. To listen to nothing... sometimes it's the only way to hear a quiet overwhelming truth. Your poetry is spare and lush at the same time--how on earth do you do that? Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI echo the others. This is lovely and delicate and enriching.
ReplyDeleteThe image is beautiful.
A quiet poem for a quiet time of year, January, its end, with nothing but an empty field to cool ourselves in, with the wind.
ReplyDeleteLove this, Ruth.
I see you in my Reader and I laugh, for I'm not sure if I've responded to you here. I know I've responded to you, for I read you earlier, and I felt you, your words, felt the wind-no-wind, but can't remember if I left little black words.
ReplyDeleteGorgeous.
xo
erin
I love your poem, Ruth. It is so beautiful. I especially love the idea of listening to nothing. It may seem dull for me to talk about structure, but as a poet, I cannot help but notice those lovely line breaks:) It goes so well with the picture and walks me along in quiet wonder. Gorgeous and refreshing.
ReplyDeleteOh my. So beautiful, Ruth!
ReplyDeleteThis poem amounts an invitation to practice samatha (concentration) meditation where the mind becomes very very calm and quiet. Your final lines, describe it quite tellingly:
Come out
to the empty field
in the cool morning
and listen
to nothing,
no voice,
no song,
no sound
and almost no
wind.
That's what it's like. The breath becomes so subtle it's like that:
Almost
no wind (breath).
The state of absorption can be almost intoxicating... calling to mind Rumi's poem today about wine.
Thanks, Ruth!
Ruth - is that the moon from around the 19 Jan?
ReplyDeleteTo reach that dawn calm would be worth all the soul's spiraling. The cadence of your words ends in a wonderful hush. (The photo is gorgeous!)
ReplyDeletea brilliant poem that communicates so much more than can ever be discerned in one attempt to understand all it can mean, even if that single attempt was an eternal one.
ReplyDeletenever will an understandering be complete without a minimum or two.
I love this one Ruth, and like others I wonder about the author.
right now I feel they are actually your words, your discovery that you are just not laying claim to.
Ahhhhhh...a feast of silence. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteA beautiful poem with a beautiful image – so pure, so calm and peaceful … and cold. I can’t relate too much with it today after having been out in the sun looking at all the tall palm trees, taking pictures of vivid flowers and watching the animated life around here in southern California (in the high 70s today.) This is a big country.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful once more, words and picture. Yours is truly schronizing, the pairing of meaning or association of unlikely entities, as you've explained in a previous post. For here, another title just came to me: The Sound of Silence. Thanks again, Ruth.
ReplyDeleteThere's a little bit of Rumi here, Ruth. An image that pulls me in and words that are quiet in their spareness.
ReplyDeleteThank you, my dear Susie. :)
ReplyDeleteMe too, Louise. Thank you. I look forward to catching up at your blog this weekend.
ReplyDeleteLorenzo, maybe there isn't a better response to a piece of writing than to hear that it speaks to you from your own personal mythology. I think much about how it is that we, as humans, share one another's stories, in such personal ways, even when our experiences and circumstances are vastly different.
ReplyDeleteAs for authoring the poem, or taking dictation . . . I have begun to feel that there may be little distinction between the two.
There is probably no way for me to imagine winter now, or to imagine myself really, without the lens of Stevens' poem, just as it probably isn't possible to distinguish between the wind-breath outside, or inside. I don't say this out of any kind of haughty zen-ness. It just is. I so identify with that field.
Thank you.
Thank you, kenju. Maybe we all need to cool down.
ReplyDeleteThank you, George. It is what we're looking for, always. Sometimes even when I'm in the throes of bliss, reading Rilke for instance, contemplating the most powerful heartbeats, I need to return to open space, and quiet.
ReplyDeleteDana, me too! For me, quiet is music.
ReplyDeleteWelcome, and thank you, JeannetteLS. I love picturing that, the poem on the fridge (yes!), the opened window, the quiet listening. Yes, for truth, and sometimes for just nothing.
ReplyDelete"Spare and lush" ? Thank you for a perfect compliment, for stating what it is I wish for. In a brief word: Get rid of "poetics," . . . and speak out of my heart. That's it!
Maureen, thank you for your choice of words, very much.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Terresa. It would be nice to have the coolness when you're in the middle of the dessert heat of Nevada.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that, Char.
ReplyDeleteErin, a heart response . . . far more important than little black words. And I appreciate them both, very much.
ReplyDeleteI'm just beyond the tree line , where there is a clearing,
ReplyDeletea smaller field,
and I am there. In the quiet. With you. And yet alone.
I felt this deeply, Ruth.
Julie, I thank you. And to talk about structure is not nothing to, and from, a poet. I appreciate very much that you noticed, and think they're "lovely." :)
ReplyDeleteDan, thank you so much for your very affirming comments. I don't study Zen Buddhism, and I'm glad to hear that there is teaching-practice that espouses the sense I have of this silent, and almost breath-less, need-presence.
ReplyDeleteOh I love that Rumi poem, and where it takes me, the ambling back . . .
God has given us a dark wine so potent
that, we leave the two worlds. . .
Letty: Nope. Guess what? It's from December 8, 2006. I take it the moon looked like this Jan. 19? Alas, since our hot tub broke, I don't go out and look at the moon as I should. Such a bad baby.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Barb. I like sharing the wonders and love of winter with you.
ReplyDeleteDusti, yay! I'm so glad you love this one.
ReplyDeleteMy words, or discovered words, or words taken in dictation as Lorenzo asked, my goal in life is to shrink the gaps between and among them. To achieve art/expression/writing that dissolves boundaries having to do with "who wrote it?" so that a reader might even feel that he had written it, that is the union I long for!
Thank you, Amy, yes, ahhhhhh. I needed it too.
ReplyDeleteVagabonde, thank you.
ReplyDeleteYes, you're back on your west coast, but much farther south than your youth in San Francisco. You are still drawn to flowers, as you were then as a flower child. I think you know more about this big country of ours than I do. I have been meaning to ask if you have taken American citizenship?
Enjoy that long, slow journey at sea, my friend. Talk about quiet.
Thank you for that, Deborah. I think the Rumi that is in me is sneaking into some of my writings. How can he not? I've been typing up his poems every day for nearly a year now . . . The cadence and spareness starts to sit in you.
ReplyDeleteDeb, we do share our solitude. It's a blessed singularity. Thank you, my friend.
ReplyDeleteArti, you're so good at this! This one, The Sound of Silence is an oxymoron . . . or is it?
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Hi Ruth, Silence is what i like about winter,although i do miss the sound of rain and the sounds of the trains in the winter, the house sealed up tight.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, i enjoy silence,especially after a long day at work. Nothing like it ,alone with you thoughts.
xoxo cb. ( another great photo. I need to take a class! this summer hopefully. Any suggestions?)
I'll bet even the angels are quiet when they stand in the middle of that field under such a moon.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful - both words and image and so suited to one another.
Shhh....I don't want to disturb the silence. Shh...
ReplyDeleteAnd - what a stunning image!
So beautiful....so peaceful. I love the photo, too!
ReplyDeletebeautiful reflection, ruth
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing you didn't even want us to hear your voice this time?!
ReplyDeleteFor this, I weep...the image the word pictures, the no-sound ("the nothing that is" yes, Rumi, yes, and someone else who felt the wings of angels and whom it almost seems you are trying to comfort).
ReplyDeleteFor all that is present in this, the poem of no
wind
Listen to nothing. I love to do that. Especially at the lake. I confess, I usually have noise around me, even if I am not listening, because any noise is better than the noise in my ears always. But sometimes, when it's late at night, the boats have gone home and all you can hear is -- nothing -- its amazing.
ReplyDeletewonderful images in every which way
ReplyDeleteThe poem is crisp, concise and beautiful, and the picture seems tailor-made for it. Remarkable photograph, needs to be in print.
ReplyDelete