Walking meditation

The egg balances on a spine.
I am the vase the world dwells inside;
my emptiness centers all, holds it all
in the negative space of its arms.
I loop among the other sleepwalkers
calling (little voice) out to my god
to come and dwell here. Sudden joy
in the seams, in the eaves of the day
all week long. Lost in my own steps,
my own weaving pathway, balanced
in the orbit of the earth. How slowly,
how quickly, can I walk and still
keep the eyes inside me open?

To form my spirit

I am reading Jack
Kornfield on the Metro,
and am summoned
toward a journey,
to see a white ox grazing
in a field. For
a third generation
mystic, the call
whispers ancient
news, revelation,
but then, how
do I get there?
Little meditations,
minutes at a time,
floating in peace.
staying alert so
I don’t miss gleams
of light on the Metro?

Boulder Friends Meeting

My children flap their picture books
restless, ready for any flight
but this
fall
to the heart of silence.
When they dart loose
to First Day School
then, on the good days,
I let go, one by one,
the iridescent onion layers
of my knowing and slide
to the narrow air
of silence. Here
out of time
I rest
a sliver
learning to be light.
This new I floats
with the gathered friends
a mote riding ethereal breezes
toward this radiance
this clearing in the faces.

The hardest thing

is finding time,
is pacing. So that
there are stretches
of peace. So that
you can bear the
jiggly, wavering
progress to and
from your goals.
There is no end
of demand, of loss,
of detour, so take
the green fields
while you can,
dandelions and all
in glimpses from
the cart of dreams.

I am a Quaker who attends silent worship weekly and has also been on a couple of silent week-long Buddhist retreats. I am grateful for the peace that sometimes shows up to help me center my wandering self.

Faith Williams lives in Washington, DC, with husband and two dogs, was most recently a children’s librarian in a charter school, and for years before that in other DC libraries, and before that taught English. She has published poems in Earth’s Daughters, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Mom Egg, Poet Lore, Nimrod International, Kansas Quarterly, Tinderbox, Xanadu, and Comstock Review, among others.