Two Quiet Poems

In case a moment of quiet is something you could use about now

Photo by Marsha Reid on Unsplash

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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.

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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.

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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.

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