This is the light of stillness
after everything has been said and thought,

after the day has been brought to its knees
once more, after the excuses,

the bargainings with self, conversations
that started so hopefully, but stopped.

Don’t expect the darkened maple
to turn over a bright leaf, find its own breeze.

What pours in through the blinds
is unmoved as the numb paw of your hand

half opened or closed on the snow
bank pillow, cold as the truth of its sleep.

Let that radiance lift me weightless,
timeless, into its night,

and the dark body settle itself
in the animal weight of its pale world

Ron Stottlemyer lives with his wife in Helena, Mont. His work has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Streetlight Magazine, Twyckenham Notes, Rust and Moth, The Worchester Review, The Chattahoochie Review, and other journals. His poem “Falling” was award a Pushcart Prize, appearing in the 2020 Pushcart anthology.