Expanded Role

too much talk of movement and waking
and sleeping and that other thing,
the surge toward death.  enough of that:

talk instead of standing still
and not doing anything at all.
find some dialect used by stones.

it will likely have lots of words
that mean “there’s nothing happening.”
right now the kids are gone

and summer isn’t.  right now
the living is easy
and the breathing isn’t.  staying still

feels like it’s
the honorable thing to do,
really the only thing to do.

somebody go tell the young ones
that these moments with no action
are worthy of poems too,

that the fat body by the pool
isn’t motionless because it has passed
but because it knows how valuable

a moment without need for action is.
some of us got over dramas
and the frantic dances of connection

long ago.  we’re in a slowing now,
a slow, slower, slowest.  it’s fine —
it’s not death but a settling

into the purity between breaths.
it’s ok to write a poem for that.
it’s ok for a poem not to change a thing.