a thinking stillness

.

.

Uninterrupted, capacious,

they ponder.

Able to house many beings 

without distraction.

Traveling upward

no farther than they go down.

Across an ocean, someone

describes them as standing wells -

they sway with contentment,

as if a yellow bird had

perched on their branches;

they are impervious 

to opinion, and still this is so.

It may be that some

keep secrets,

though every touch

alters their bodies.

It may be that some 

are geniuses of their kind.

I would like, even once,

 to embrace on in its own language,

though I imagine, too,

a transaction unrecoverably cold,

as if two widows of anciently 

warring families met on a bus:

Why should even one of them excuse us?

I have listened with pleasure 

through early snow to the sharp

report of their losses.

Mixed gasoline and oil for the saw,

polished the table with bees' wax,

added the extra, unneeded log.

My concern only.  The bus

diesel on, the woman gets off,

buttoning her coat.

Incense of resin and lignin, 

of copper and leaf-sap;

token of circumspection, 

coppice of tranquil indifference,

shore-edge of pure abstain;

meditation of beetles held lightless -

I slip you into her pocket.

Single bead of the rosary: manzanita, cedar,

maple, aspen, willow, tan oak, pine.

.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart

.