Stillness:
Tell me more
about yourself.

You've shown me
Benedictine trees
robed in frost
and penance,
one leaf
embalmed with ice
and haze
that seems to have
some clean, primitive
awareness.

Are they in on it too?

Garden of ash,
winter's illusion.
I can see
through it now.
I can even shatter
the mirror
of my night,
even draw down
the hermit sun
with one
thing and one
thing only:

this particle of faith.

Come to me,
untouched gold
behind the clouds . . .
succulent, ripe
and promising
as Venus, newborn,
on a shell.

Come to me,
nurturing star in a
gallery of worlds:

God behind,

within,

everything.

You never lost me,
did you?
One word and it's
Genesis all over
again.

I thought
I had to crawl
and grasp and
audition for
a part in devotion
or climb the
withered sky,
even past the
imperial drapes
of the void,

or float with
dazed purity
like the moon on
dark waters.

If I could only get it
right . . .
I would be there,

but now it seems
that even in the
silent screams
of shadows,

I never left the Light.


Patricia Joan Jones