There are three stages along the path
Of realization and accomplishment.
The first involves outer form,
Keeping the discipline, persevering
Even when there is no light.
The second begins when awareness dawns,
A glimpse of our true nature
Like a shy fish looking up out of the pond.
This is the stage of true faith and devotion
As this insight of inner light becomes the center.
The third stage is just more of the second,
A repeated familiarity with our basic nature
Through direct experience and awareness.
With familiarity comes a softening of the edges
A loosening at the core.
As the sublime becomes the everyday,
The shy fish now a flock of starlings
Confident in their numbers
Fluid and graceful in their murmuration,
A cloud of unknowing for all to see.
(9/22/26)
Rainlight drifts across the glass compass,
each drop a small, shimmering world
s
l
i
d
i
n
g
down the curve of its crystal face.
I watch the needle tremble,
turning a fraction with every silver touch,
as if the rain remembers old directions
I once trusted.
I breathe in the soft gray brightness,
feeling it gather at my throat,
a coolness that steadies me
in ways I didn’t expect.
The air carries a stillness shaped by distance
and the familiar warmth of wet earth~
the kind that makes mefeel less alone.
Puddles gather their quiet rhythm,
and I hear it the way I hear myself
on days when my thoughts finally soften~
a rhythm that feels like gentle wonder
learning how to speak.
I turn once, then again~
slowly, deliberately
my breath easing with the motion,
my chest loosening a little,
and the horizon shifts,
offering a muted glow
that feels almost like an answer.
We warmed the bench with cold stares,
holding onto yesterday’s glass of champagne.
A boy cried somewhere,
loosening his grip on a balloon
that slipped into a sky that never looks back.
Should I pity a crying child,
or an adult swallowing storms in silence?
“I should go,” she said, and
I found my hand reaching for hers,
like a child clinging to his mother
as she nears the grocery counter too soon,
hoping time would stall,
hoping something small could still be saved.
But some things are no-brainers,
inevitable as gravity,
the balloon has flown,
belonging now to no one,
or maybe to everything but us.
The child stopped crying
when his mother placed a bar of chocolate
into his waiting hands.
And I envied him,
because how does a child receive sweetness after sorrow,
while an adult is handed a weapon
and told to be brave instead of held?
No chocolate, no comfort,
just something sharp enough
to silence the trembling.
I guess that’s why
I stand where I stand,
not as someone to be soothed,
but as someone to be used.
I guess
I really am
His favorite soldier.
evening’s quiet breath~
a single gull skims the tide
day loosens its hold
I felt the tug, the loosening air~
Oh joy! I drift without earthly care.
I popped free with a laughing spin,
a tiny pilgrim, born of wind.
My comrades joined—what giddy glee,
dancing like colorful confetti spiritually.
The autumn breeze nudged us in its stride,
we somersaulted, tumbling side by side.
We skimmed the lakes, pirouetting on our way~
a drifting troupe, an autumnal ballet.
We rode the rivers, wild and free,
a giggling, leaf-born odyssey.
The wind grew hushed; our laughter stilled~
as though some deeper call was filled.
We felt the earth’s slow pull begin~
God’s summons soft as whispered wind.
We settled down in muted grace~
content to fade, to feed this place.
evening settles soft,
a calm hand
smoothing edges of the day.
I breathe its peace,
every worry
loosening in the light.
in that stillness,
trust grows gently,
resting in God’s steady care.
A single white rose—
soft-scented
still
slender—
silvered stem
slight sway
as if
silence
spoke
moonlight—
settling
slow
milky
luminous
lingering
along each
smooth swell
petal by petal—
pale hush
pressed
into night’s
open
waiting palm
wind—
wandering in
low
woven
whisper
winter
in its breath
while the world—
wider
waning
wilting
wordless
no crimson
flare
no fierce
fraying
frill
no bright
burning
insistence—
only
soft
steadfast
presence
gathered—
in stillness
one bloom
bare
but brimming
bathed
in blue
breathing hush
breeze—
brush
bend
break away
loosening
its silence—
lingers
slow
settling
softness
velvet
over skin
a vow—
voiceless
yet held
fragile—
fine as frost
faintly lit
never faltering
never folding
no name
no claim
no blame
no bruise
no burden
only—
this
single
white
rose
still
soft
steadfast
We shuffle the days
like cards across the table,
hoping to draw Spring.
But the deck grows ever thinner
with every hand we choose to play.
Entropy walks on,
spilling sugar, cooling tea,
loosening tight knots.
dealing cards from beneath the pack
while Time pretends not to notice.
There's much kerfuffle
when stars bend the road between
one heartbeat and the next.
Cards arrive out of sequence
Distance becomes duration
Time is stretched and distended,
paths are bent and distorted
and you arrive before you left.
Memory itself reshuffles
dealing tomorrow before yesterday.
A mother's laugh, a child's distressed cry—
both hiding in the same hand
waiting for the shuffle
to reveal a trump card between them.
We trace every moment
on clock faces and calendars,
yet we cannot tell
which breath came first
or which came last.
The instant we watch too closely,
the dealer stops dealing,
skips a card,
moves on—
then quietly slips
an extra card into our pile
while we're looking
the other way.
For, the kerfuffle of entropy's shuffling
keeps ruffling the deck
we mistake for
of our Time.
criss cross
. soft rising
. spirit gathering
. toward the breath
. HOLY
. light loosening
. fading gently
. into stillness
. quiet falling
the painting breathes
a hush of pale blue dusk
settling over the river’s slow glass
snow drifts soft, unhurried
each flake a small wandering thought
finding its way down
the river holds the sky in a trembling mirror
icy but calm as if dusk has laid its hand
gently on the water’s pulse
bare branches lean inward listening to the quiet
to the soft descent of winter’s silver breath
and in the distance light fades
not abruptly but like a memory
loosening its hold
the whole scene rests inside its own stillness
a moment caught between
f
a
l
l
n
g
and reflection
A thin seam of light appears
where the world has worn thin.
I step closer,
feeling the hush gather around me.
Nothing opens outward~
instead, the doorway widens within,
a soft unfastening of fear,
a loosening of the old, tight self.
And through that inner brightness,
I finally see what has been waiting.
I kissed the rain~
not for its taste,
but for the way it softened the world,
loosening the hard outlines
of everything I once believed.
Spellbound by sunlight,
I rose into the shimmer,
a silhouette stitched from brightness
and half-remembered longing.
I am a dangerous dream~
soft as sleep,
sharp as prophecy,
a threshold where shadows
learn to glow.
But to be your moon, must I wane?
Must I thin myself
into a silver whisper
just to orbit your gravity?
Rain on my lips,
sun in my bones,
danger in my dreaming,
and a moon that refuses to dim~
this is the shape I make
when all my selves
rise at once.
Sometimes I feel a loosening,
not a rise or fall
but a sideways slip
into the body’s secret dream~
the one it keeps folded
behind the pulse.
Inside, everything is surreal.
The ribs bloom like pale petals,
opening and closing
with a slow botanical breath.
Capillaries curl like red vines,
twining around thoughts
I haven’t had yet.
I wander deeper,
past the soft machinery
of muscle and memory,
where neurons spark
like tiny bioluminescent fish
darting through a midnight reef.
The heart meanders by~
not beating, but floating,
a warm, wandering lantern
in search of its own echo.
I follow its glow
into a chamber~
where cells gather like pilgrims,
trading stories in chemical syllables
I almost understand.
Here, my body feels ancient~
a living archive
of every dream, wound, wonder
I’ve ever carried.
And as I move through it,
I realize I’m not leaving myself
but meeting myself
in places I never knew existed.
An inner-body experience~
not escape,
but entry
into the surreal biology
that has held me
all these years.
Fear My Return
I went quietly,
like frost leaving a window,
like smoke loosening its grip on a room
no one aired.
You called it peace.
You called it closure.
You folded my name into drawers
with old batteries and bent spoons,
told yourself memory was a soft thing.
But I was only waiting.
Not in thunder
no drums, no banners
only in the slow arithmetic of wounds,
in the marrow’s patience,
in the stubborn seed beneath a stone.
You will hear me first
in the hinge that won’t stop singing,
in footsteps that echo one beat too many,
in the mirror’s refusal
to lie on your behalf.
Fear my return
not because I come with fire,
but because I come with truth.
Because I will wear your forgotten promises
like medals.
Because I will knock
with every hand you turned away.
I have learned the dark roads.
I have tasted silence until it spoke.
I have named the ghosts
you hired to replace me.
And when I stand again
in the doorway of your certainty,
with eyes sharpened by exile,
with a voice tempered like steel
you will know
I am not here for mercy.
I am here
to finish the sentence
you were too afraid
to hear begun.
I was told I began—
so I assume I am.
No proof—
only a feeling.
Only learned assumptions,
repeated until they
find a foothold, and hold.
Ground gives—
footing slips and slides
taking sides.
Floundering with truth
devoid of scaffolds
the self loosens its chains.
What’s held firm dissolves
to what this is, now it questions.
Failing again and again—
the whys and wherefores
outlive the free fall
without a chute,
without a ripcord.
Certainty petrifies—
the floundering
within the foundering.
What the teacher taught stands tall
until something breaks it—
and even then,
doubt breaks what's real,
into a simple reflex reactions.
Beauty—
held in the eye
vies with
eye-spy-with-my-little-eye
to catch the beholder's drift.
And in that loosening—
the floundering deepens,
the foundering drifts away
from the its mooring
on the foundation.
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.