Presence

Be still.

Not because someone is coming.
Not because you are being tested.
Not because silence earns an answer.

Be still
because what you are looking for
is already here.

Not elsewhere.
Not later.
Not once you have suffered enough
or understood enough
or become worthy.

Here.
In the pause before thought names anything.
In the light resting on the sill.
In the breath returning
after you notice
you have been holding it.

You keep asking where.
That is the old mistake.

A door was never closed to you.
There was no lock.
Only light,
and your habit
of passing through it
without turning your head.

What if nothing has withheld itself?
What if the distance
was made not by absence
but by fear?
By the self,
so busy surviving,
it could not recognize
what did not threaten it.

Stop searching outward.

Ask instead:
where have I gone
when beauty came near?
Why do I call it longing
when perhaps it is only
my refusal
to stay?

Put down the questions.
For a moment,
put down even your story.

Stand where you are.
Feel the ground
take your weight.

Something is here
that does not need to announce itself.
It does not argue.
It does not force belief.
It does not leave
because you are distracted.

It is in this.
In the room.
In the body.
In the ordinary radiance
of what is already given.

Listen.

Not with the mind
that wants to conclude.
Not with the part of you
that measures and compares.

Listen
the way the skin listens to warmth.
The way the feet know
the earth is beneath them.

And then say nothing.

Not because there is nothing to say,
but because, finally,
something larger than speech
has entered the silence
and remained.