On Stillness

I. 

Stuck. 

Again. 

Haven’t I been here before? 

Wondering how it was I didn't heed the warnings— 

Wondering why I sped up when I saw green shift to yellow—

Wondering why I can’t just will myself out of this rumination roundabout. 

The exit signs whirl past me as the pedal hits metal and the only path seems like push and crash—burning doesn’t seem optional—until all there is left are fumes…. Harder. Faster. Almost…not quite there…yet.

Is that what the bee felt yesterday when I chose not to intervene?

She buzzed relentlessly at the glass in the front door as the dog circled her nose in the same flight pattern. For hours this game of dog and bee—round and round and round. 

I did nothing. 

This morning, I saw what remained. 

Stiff. Still.

Something has been undone.  

I bent to lift her by the iridescent wing. I studied the hard, cold eyes and admired the shimmer of soft fuzz adorning the top of her head and coating her thorax. I wept as I pictured her in those last hours. I ached to see her like that, curled in as if to comfort herself—imagined as she tried to muster one last fitful buzz.

Perhaps the dog was only trying to help. At least she was there, present to her own longings. 

II. 

Ah, surrender—

It's you, again.

I’m—

throwing out the never-ending list of demon do-more-now…

throwing my arms in the air…

throwing myself into mySelf.

I shed the angsty armor that has been building in layers around me as  

I disrobe from the pace of the outside world. 

There is a burning,

but this time it is different. 

Lying in the garden until all there is left is me—

unraveling, slowing, letting myself be…still.

I do nothing.

But the sun does me—

hums his warmth into every part of where I have forgotten to Be.

Is that what the plants feel like each dawn 

in the moment he peeks over the hill?

Imbibing his nectar—

inviting the ecstasy of the divine right to flourish.

The sun fulfills his sacred promise.

They stretch out toward him;

their toes dig deep into the dark expanse, 

seeking that warm, nurturing source, 

so that they may give and keep on giving the only thing they know how to give— 

more of themselves.

Perhaps I must learn to receive relentlessly,

like the plants, 

in the unabashed glory that is all my own.

Then, nothing will be left undone.

May I be sung.