And is this quiet life a way of hiding?
I tell myself that this is service, too –
to learn, to see, to read and hear and know
to bring to light my own awareness
and dwell within that knowing,
simmer as others have simmered,
become tender –
this shared tenderness, having
weathered the impact of truth.
This is what joins us, as undercurrent
- it does not flow with words, so
much as tacit understanding, that we
cannot afford to ignore what has
been done and how that formed what
still is done and shapes us now.
