Max Reif: "Still Point"

Leaving home
for work
each day

I hear the trees
say "What’s your hurry?"

Rooted, they
don’t understand

how in my world
we have to rush
to keep in step.

I haven’t even time
to stop and tell them
how on weekends, too,
schedules wait
like nets.

It’s only on a sick day
when I have to venture out
to pick up medicine

that I understand the trees,
there in all their fullness
in a world unpatterned

full of moments,
full of spaces,
every space
a choice.

This day
has not
been turned yet
on the lathe

this day
lies open, light
and shadow. Breath
fills the body easily.
I step

into a world
waiting like
a quiet lover.

"Still Point" by Max Reif. Text as published in Everyday Music: Recent Poems. © 2009 Max Reif. Used with permission of the poet. To read more of Max Reif's writings, go to Faith of an Artist—The Writings of Max Reif.

Art credit: Untitled photograph uploaded May 1, 2013, by Eric Benjamin.