No Words Needed

The Second Poem the Night-Walker Wrote

Over all the hilltops
Silence,
Among all the treetops
You feel hardly
A breath moving.
The birds fall silent in the woods.
Simply wait! Soon
You too will be silent.

     From: The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy
               by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, p. 210

Though it is no longer night, I read these words and resonate with their meaning. Today's world is frosted with two to three inches of weighty snow. And, other than a woodpecker climbing up a tree and the occasional flutter and flush of a flock of birds, all is quiet, silent, resting....

As I practiced T'ai Chi Chih, seated, on the porch I watched clumps of snow slide to earth. Birds flew thither and yon and an occasional burst of birdsong broke the ponderous silence.

A slight breeze stirs the treetops into a wispy circular dance. But the drenching weight of overnight snowfall--and the calming effects of my T'ai Chi Chih practice--have inspired in me a contemplative silence. No words needed. No thing to do.