Tag: still

Learning Stillness by Robbin Farr

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Learning Stillness

Rereading a friend’s poems,
a gentler time, a time after

my mother’s hospitalizations
for such ailments as trouble

the very old. Yet I am certain
this peace will not last.

Certain restlessness lingers, waits
for the midnight phone to ring,

voice on the other side terse,
anxious with bad news.

Her poems instruct, warn
the wariness of me. Coax me

to learn from the vulnerable
bloodroot that leans into the just

thawing creek to crack open
the bud. Attune my ear

to the water chimes that ring
in this field only. Rest

like the bee asleep in the flower
among the sweet perfume

of its labor. To attend to breath
and song and hum. To stop

searching other worlds
for the inevitable.

*

Robbin Farr writes short form: poetry and brief lyric nonfiction. In addition to writing, she is the editor of River Heron Review poetry journal. Robbin’s work has been published in Cleaver, Citron Review, The MacGuffin, Sky Island and elsewhere. She is the author of two books of poetry, Become Echo (2023) and Transience (2018). She is most happy when revising and submitting. Writing terrifies her. More about Robbin at robbinfarr.com.

Two Poems by Donna Hilbert

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Still

Be still for a long while
to catch what heron sees

in water’s flux and ruffle:
the tiny fish below.

To see the tiny fish below
that heron catches

in water’s flux and ruffle,
for a long while, be still.

*

Explanation

You wouldn’t have become a poet,
if you’d had a happy childhood
the mother said
to her grown-up child,

as if conferring a blessing,
offering consolation,
instead of the excuse,
the curse, the life-long sentence,
of becoming a poet.

*

Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Enormous Blue Umbrella, Moon Tide Press, 2025. Work has appeared in journals and broadcasts including Eclectica, Gyroscope, Rattle, Sheila Na Gig, ONE ART, Cholla Needles, TSPoetry, VerseDaily, Vox Populi, The Writer’s Almanac, anthologies including Boomer Girls, The Widows’ Handbook, The Poetry of Presence I & II, The Path to Kindness, The Wonder of Small Things, Love Is For All Of Us, What the House Knows, Poetry Goes The Movies. She writes and leads workshops from her home base in Long Beach, California.

Two Poems by Sandra Kohler

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Morning: Still and Moving

The sky’s dun, the roses needing dead-heading
gone dull tan, the morning air thin, reluctant,
a shy child. There are those who hurry, those
who can’t. The woman who tries but is limping,
bent. There is a season dying, a season being born.

When the breeze picks up, it carries fear not hope.
Only the smallest birds fly, a sabbath silence settles
over the grayed street, one butterfly skitters
and darts through still air. It does not come to
the waiting buddleia, the rich purple offerings

a bee cruises. Dim noise of distant traffic comes
to my senses the way a scent of fire does, smoke
scent of fires a continent away. Still hope is always
apprehension’s underside, what we know and
can’t. Sudden grace: a cardinal lands, on the porch

railing first, then hops to the red car roof, perches
for a moment, flies down the driveway, vanishes
from my sight. Like possibility, sign to pursue, like
the flight of the slow gull, the tread of the fat
man with a tiny dog who’s pacing the sidewalk.

The cardinal and the gull, the dog and the bee: as
always, morning offers what I can and cannot see.

*

Duets

Our beloved dead
now come to us
as voices

at daybreak, twilight –
on the cusps of
darkness, light.

We thought we had lost
them, their loved tones
forgotten,

but liminal times –
the hours of
waking, sleep

summon them from depths
into daylight, their
voices still

present, sounding our
identities,
theirs and ours,

so giving us back
others we loved,
and old selves.

*

Sandra Kohler’s third collection of poems, Improbable Music, (Word Press) appeared in May, 2011. Earlier collections are The Country of Women (Calyx, 1995) and The Ceremonies of Longing, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). Her poems have appeared in journals, including The New Republic, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, and many others over the past 45 years. In 2018, a poem of hers was chosen to be part of Jenny Holzer’s permanent installation at the new Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia.