Two Quiet Poems
In case a moment of quiet is something you could use about now
One is from the Covid shutdown. One is from my kitchen table. One has the word “quiet” ticking through its stanzas like a clock. One has an actual clock, ticking in a quiet room.
Each of them means to bring you a moment of quiet, a chance to let your shoulders slide down and your breath move in and out the way it wants to. Nothing more than that; nothing less.
Love you. Breathing with you.
KITCHEN 2024
Cream and gold and white
and cobalt blue —
walls cracked in cream,
cream linoleum patterned in gold,
golden-warm wood of the table
and the little rocking chair;
blue in stripes on worn white towels,
the sides of a tumbler,
a glass rabbit peering
around the plant pot on a shelf.
Golden runs of piano notes
from the radio, white noise
from the fridge, a wind-up clock
ticking seconds like blue paint drops
onto the linoleum, into the cream-
and-golden morning air.
Time steals, and gives, and steals again.THE BACK OF THE BUDDHA 2020
This is not a poem
about seeing the back of the Buddha
in the window of a house
on a quiet city street
in a season of plague and suffering.
This is not a poem
about seeing the back of the Buddha,
because the Buddha is not seen through the window
of a house on a plague-quiet street
in a season (when is it not) of suffering.
This is not a poem
about seeing the back of the Buddha
in a window, pure and upright
in white porcelain, however serene the glaze,
however quiet the season.
This is perhaps a poem
about the grain in the wood of the table
where the Buddha sits, back to the window,
glazed in quiet, pure as porcelain,
in a house in a city of plague.
This is perhaps a poem
about the heart-shaped leaves of the plant
in the white pot beside the Buddha,
or the quiet folds of white curtains
at the window in a house of suffering,
but
this is not a poem
about seeing the back of the Buddha,
because the Buddha, even seen, is not seen;
only present perhaps, perhaps in this window
in this house, in this suffering city,
in this moment of quiet, in the season that it is.

"The Back of the Buddha" is one of my very favorites.
Maybe my favorite COVID poem I've seen yet! Thank you! And thank you to that spotted Buddha.