I am trying to write this morning and the long awaited landscapers are here mowing. The huge riding mower is so loud it is drowning out sounds about the room. The windows are rattling and I wonder how I can write about the necessity of quiet when my very teeth are on edge.

And then I remember to breathe. This too shall pass. Each moment is like a bell curve. There is a beginning, a peak, and a subsequent lessening. Okay, now I hear them in the backyard, but that too will lessen as they move to the next yard and the next down the street.

Cannot even show you a photo of the man standing behind the mower as all the photos online are pristine mowers with absolutely NO grass cuttings upon them.

The point for me is how can I return to the quiet once the quiet is disrupted? Do you have a trick to do that?

I decided to step outside and try to photograph the first bachelor’s button of the season. They seeded themselves from last year and are now starting to bloom. (May 11) I might have practiced the method I wrote about in the following poem right then, but the mower was back to shear the verge so I came inside to check the photos and write the poem out for your perusal.

Page 5 in the new book Poems.

"This poem took me into the deeper silence of meditation. For me, the center down silence of being with God is a wonderful place to be. Thus, Down repeats in the poem. 

Bachelor’s Buttons

Going inward with the deep blue of the bachelor’s buttons
I sink down.
I take the encompassing blue with me.
Down.
I drop my shoulders
Down
I breathe the blue petals.
Knowing the blue from the petals will fade.
Down.
For now they wrap me in stillness.
Down.
Wash me in the blue brightness I pray.
Down.
Not Mrs. Stewart’s bluing agent.
Down.
But the true blue of fresh flower.
Down.
Peculiar petals. Down
To where I am nestled inside the flower.
Down.
Beyond pollen gathering bees.
Down.
Sitting still in the Blues.
I am restored.

Just contacted WordPress and learned a new skill! Hope you liked this layout 🙂

Typing it and editing the photos, I stop. And drop. And roll in the restoration.

Down. Help me to stay with You, Lord. “Continuously renewed Immediacy,” wrote Thomas R. Kelly in A Testament of Devotion.

Maybe you would like to read it again and try it?