When I Stop Moving.

When I stop moving,

the world returns.

The tide breathes in again,

the fox lifts her head from the hedge,

and the air gathers itself

like a shawl drawn over my shoulders.

I used to think stillness

was a kind of death,

a dimming of the bright, urgent flame.

But no

it is the widening of the light,

the way the sun pauses

on the lip of the sea

and makes everything gold.

I kneel in the field,

and something kneels with me.

Perhaps it is God,

or perhaps it is simply

the hum of the earth,

both seem enough.

Here, at last,

I remember:

to pause is not to lose the world,

but to be returned to it,

tenderly,

as a wave returns to shore.