I worked for a year at a meditation retreat center in the Catskill mountains near Lake Shandelee in Livingston Manor, New York. It was located on several acres of incredibly beautiful deep and pristine woods that were covered for most of the year in deep piles of clean white snow. I would walk in those woods often for the beauty, solitude and healing peace they afforded me. And I marveled at the silence, like a loving presence, that I could lose myself in so completely and so willingly.
When I left the center and came back in to the "real" world, I was soon hit with a serious and mysterious illness that sapped me of all my energy and strength and left me languishing in hopeless despair.
For what seemed like an eternity, I meditated and prayed to be healed. And then one evening, just when I thought I could go no further, the memories of my experiences in the wooded sanctuary of Livingston Manor started to glimmer inside of me and I grasped onto them like a lifeline in the darkness. When I woke up the next morning, I was healed.
Silence Be Still is a paean to that miracle.
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Silence Be Still
(1)
Silence,
be soothing,
my spirit’s weak now,
‘round again in whispers
for the burning hurt,
be still
Silence,
be still with me, soft
as I yearn,
and the memories of Eden, Sweet Balm
soothing, promise no scars through this justice
be soft
ever soft with me,
soft
in this vortex,
widening in ever-widening circles
revolving in circles
in sizes and colors and shapes
weaved in patterns,
in infinite patterns
of endless designs
which flow,
unremembered
and know,
unremembered,
The Clock’s Ticking,
Tyrant,
Through Time
Quietly….
(2)
Softly in silence snow sounds fall
flakes on limb and leaf,
footsteps’ powder’s dissonance
high-pitched
Through Pine and Oak and Maple
Sentries in the Sap
Surrounding
fragments and
fragmented notes
converging in a matrix,
the sounds and the silence
in Symphony.
And sympathy swells in me, so still as it flows,
Ever silently showing,
All ways
To go with you....
Icicle Fairyland Fairytale Colors
Dancing on Branches like
Christmas Tree Tinsel!
All Over!
All Over!
And Better
And Brighter!
Exquisitely
Mocking, But Gently,
In Gentle Magnificence
Teaching Me, Reaching Me
Reaching,
For the silent stillness
Silent Stillness.
(3)
Reaching me in silence, sunlight melts into snow and
footsteps
disappear,
floating like the snowflake,
melting in the
shadows,
like the shadows,
melting slowly,
going nowhere,
left behind.
And patterns in the path ahead,
Appearing once as circles,
now are spirals,
there in signs like
hieroglyphics,
special message in the sunlight
from the winds no longer stinging,
ever blowing,
ever blown,
ever knowing,
ever known,
ever silent,
ever soothing,
ever still with me,
Be still.
(4)
Ever soft with me the snowfall’s quiet music,
Sun-caressed in silence,
Growing still in me.
Painted pictures,
hiding gently,
More a pledge now
Than a promise,
Softly flowing with the words,
Showing silently,
Knowingly,
Knowingly in silence,
Knowingly in
Silence,
Ever
Still.