I have learned to wait quietly,
or that only in the quiet do I arrive
where I am awaited
by cicadas and wood-house toads.

The saint and the woodsman both know
that oftentimes the fire needs a stir.
The pipe, too, is a jealous god:
Light, stir, rekindle.
Pause, reflect, and—damn!
it's gone out again;
and I am just as likely to nod off
as to observe the Spirit that hangs in the air of an empty chapel.

The quiet rolls on with or without me, of course.
I am not its winding-wheel
but a thimble-full of lake water
lapping at its shore.

I would remain so,
but I have too much noise yet.
Yet. Yet here I am.
There is no golden monstrance before me;
Only yellow porchlight and the shadows
of the passing June beetles that it casts. Still

I will kneel in adoration
when the quiet finds me,
when I am moved not to move,
when the stillness stirs me to stillness,
and I am drawn from silence into silence.