SAINT JULIAN PRESS POET

SKIP RENKER

SILENT REACH

 

There’s a stillness in the world

that lives at dusk in the tapering pines

near the riverbank, light held in high branches,

darkness further down and deeper

in the woods.  Nothing is dead,

 

not the stumps, the trees

bare of leaves, the pine needles

on the forest floor, the smooth rocks parting

the river, and not this stillness,

wholly self-contained,

 

needing nothing, yet seeming

to wait for us to wake up in it,

as if, like roots, it lives to reach and feed

on the world, to give back through

itself, servant and conduit.