Poetry Dispatch No.192 | September 30, 2007
STILL by Daniel Halpern
I hear callers in the trees
but I stay in one place,
knowing motion is nothing
if I can stand like this,
hour after hour.
In this immobility a fire inflates,
and so much turbulence within the static—
the owls call, still in their trees.
They can’t see in the night, they don’t need to move.
I don’t move myself–the river moves
somewhere, the clouds without sound
move and move. They drift and disband.
The dogs are still except for their jaws,
which click in the night.
They smell the darkness, they don’t need to move.
My work is to stand still and see everything.
My work is to rethink the immobile,
the owl and the dog and without moving release them,
release myself, let everything live again,
recalled into movement and loved, wholly still.
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