By Julie Cadwallader Staub
All through the short gray day
and long into the solitary night
the snow pouredfrom itself to itself
cascading through that wide acreage
between heaven and earth singingHush
Slow Down
Stop.When morning dawned to a sparkling infinity
of curves and curls of hip-high snow,
I snowshoed, almost floating, into the woodsthe silence there
so profound
it became a third presence:the community of old growth hemlocks and white pines
that extravagance of snow
and this quiet so completethe still place in me
recognized it
and bowed.
This poem was published by Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, Spring 2022, Volume 22, number 1.