Say Less

True listeners live in the heart.

They love the gossip of raindrops,

the breaking news of Spring peepers.

 

Say less than you mean.

Grace is the gift of subtraction.

The trembling crystal of a chickadee

proclaims the whole Godspell.

 

Tell as little as a willow by a pond

where the heron glides away

on the first breath of twilight.

 

And if you must speak, leave

a rippled stillness between words,

the kind of mirror where

that long-beaked huntress might pause

 

on one leg all a golden afternoon.

Be more like the moon between clouds,

until your silences say everything.


Photo by Victoria Pittman