Meditation

There comes a time of emptiness, a time of fallow, a time when no nitrogen reaches the root, and you lie dormant as a grain of sand.
Beneath this dune you try to convince yourself of meaning’s bounty and the fruitfulness of waiting.
And in the waiting—by virtue of waiting—hope is implicated; but it doesn’t bear scrutiny.
Because in the noonday-demon-eye of acedia there are no trade winds that bring rain or a change of weather; and even your imagination falls exhausted by your side. And you receive no sign.
By effort, you might think to start again. You might think to use the silence and the solitude. The thought itself requires an ember that is beyond you. Still it is there.
It is there in the thick void. And you press your elbows to the ground and rise to your crossed legs and you breath.
And like a deaf man hearing by way of his chest you still yourself and listen. And like a blind man trusting the use of his cane you keep yourself from grasping. And there is dimness.
As through fog, you see yourself, a tree, walking. As through the dark eyes of a kind woman you see a picture of your likeness forming beneath a silver emulsion. And there is mercy.
Dwelling in this twilight an impossibility presents itself to you as a necessity: to see yourself in truth. And there is centre.
Here where poetry itself gives way to silence is a whisper that intones no rivalry. Here where shadows shimmy with light, are playful eyes that watch you with delight, and you, as through smoke, draw near, to share these eyes.