Uncrowd My Heart
Uncrowd my heart, O God, until the silence speaks. Thomas Merton
I found briefly, briefly, briefly
The silence that makes the heart.
The stillness that has legs and
Breathes and dances in your rib
Cage: whispering, this is the nothing
You were born into and the nothing
You’ll return to, which is to say the
Nothing that is a love supreme,
A love supreme. A love supreme.
The silence pierced me, like the wind
And the waves at Janette’s Pier
At midnight, when the Nag’s Head
Rains batter the shore.
The puddles gather force.
It was like that for a moment,
And spacious, too. Spacious as night sky
Over those cloaked fisherman,
Gathered at the sinks mid-pier
Flaying the flesh, spacious as the clouds
That run the edge of the sea.
Spacious as the gap between head
And heart, longer than any voyage to the
Moon, the moon which now flashes the
Fisherman’s sky, scattering the fish.
The puddles along the beach road
Welcome and gather sister moon’s light,
then gone. Then, gone.
I gather the stillness
And then gone. Then, gone.
Here’s good news: spacious
And piercing visited me,
for that moment.
I am hooked. My flesh is flayed.
Stillness is gone. It didn’t last.
And this is some good news:
It never truly leaves.
