Meditation

Only our breathing. I hold my love close, singing to myself, then whisper.
She makes a sleep sound. We breathe together, falling—
all of us, the planet, falling through space. This morning, I am stopping
for nothing, ear to the ground, listening for what we learn isn’t here.

Oh, so un-American, stopping for the small drum, sleet at our window,
rain in a tin cup; stopping for the sounds of metal plows, grumbling
across ice; stopping for the locust tree beside the window, its low, slow
groan, every branch sheathed in ice; stopping for each other, how we breathe,

all of us, trees, the planet, falling through space. Imagine loggers
coming to saw the tree. Think of the neighbor felling an old spruce
to plant a flagpole on his lawn. Hear the chainsaws,
hug the trunk. I won’t let go, I am stopping for nothing.

Will they return in my sleep? Why am I thinking this—what need
driving this dreaming? Worry for trees or puffing myself up? Someone
out there is whacking something. (Those some words—words for spaces
I am working to fill.) In lamplight across the street, a man

bundled in jacket, hat and gloves hacks ice on the hood of a pickup.
I can hear water in the plumbing, the clock ticking. . . I hold my love close.
We breathe together. I am stopping for nothing, listening and thinking
and singing—this morning’s soft shoe, whatever I please, holding us close.

Martin Steingesser
First published in Janus Head
Copyright © 2005 Trivium Publications, Amherst, NY

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