Listen to poem:
Ductile Grace
Written: July 26, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Kai Michael Neumann
Quote: "Be still, for the silence of God is the language of the soul." by Rumi
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I find my refuge not in clamor,
but in the pabulum pause between storms,
a meritorious maelstrom subdued by resolve,
where each heartbeat tackles dyspnea —
the lungs, twin sanctuaries of ductile grace.
Not all peace is pristine.
It is the palimpsest of scars deep in the psyche,
an arthroscopy of loss and lull,
each echo adumbrated in incarnadine hues
and scantlings of self painstakingly reformed.
From the outside, I might seem a yokel
stumbling into wisdom by accident,
but I have seen through the gadzookery—
the flapdoodle on polished tongues,
the hackneyed hymns of haste.
My ischemic edema has vanished,
peace thrills me
keeping my zeal is my prayer with each breath,
awe-inspiring, breathing mutters,
"Inhale—exhale.
I avoid the ornate vessels stillness.
I acquire it from shattered glass gleam.
And what of the noise? The crowd
that claim triviality as a virtue—
those who build their temples
on paucity and preach ergophobia
as a warning, wisdom.
I glide past them with quiet steps.
Extemporize no sermon,
But still I speak in zeugma’s elegance:
I bear burdens and breath,
loss and light,
quiet and question.
In the apiary of mind,
I do not cage the bees—
I waltz alongside them.
Let misanthropy molt,
let tarantism yield,
let even xenoglossia be translated
into the soft syllables of inner peace.
I am not an iconoclast seeking acclaim—
I shatter only what steals my serenity.
Peace is not antediluvian,
nor an oxer too high to overcome.
It is ductile—malleable—
crafted from the scantling echoes of life.
This is not pabulum wisdom.
This is the sovereign self,
the mind unbound from its anxious crucible,
coruscating in its quiet rebellion—
agog not with frenzy,
but liberated in its freedom.
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