by G. E. Schwartz

   I know of only two ways into the ego-freeing
Silences. One calls for an interval in solitude.
   It is an unemphatic, unremarked fugitive pang
Of beauty: perhaps a glimpse of low green hill
   Suddenly sunlit; or Caplet’s Le Miroir de Jesus
Playing itself unasked within an absent-minded
   Moment. The other way is even, although so
Unbiddable, simpler. For some occasion the
   Everyday acquaintances have gathered, gentle,
Congenial people, none of them individually
   Central, just familiar. All are focused outside
Ourselves. Some core validity rings out from
   One pronouncement, or the build of a cathedral
Of words and music: it is absorbed, and, not
   Predictably, suddenly generates that communal
Oneness, the rare-freeing silences. Other ways
   There may be. Hoping so is what makes living
Go on, go on.

G. E. Schwartz is the author of several collections of poetry, including Only Others Are (Legible Press), World (Furniture Press), Thinking In Tongues (Hanks loose Gravel Press), Murmurations (Foothills Publishing), and The Very Light We Reach For (Legible Press), and he lives and writes from Upstate, New York, in the United States.