A Poem on Stillness and the Contrast It Reveals

An Homage to David Whyte and the Space Between

I wrote this poem in the quiet echo of stillness, shaped by the insights that surfaced after a recent Vipassanā retreat. It was a time of deep silence where the presence and power of stillness became unmistakable.

It is inspired by the way

David Whyte

, in Consolations, reveals the hidden depths of everyday words. I sought to explore “stillness” in a similar way. Not as a concept, but as something known directly.

Whyte, in his reflection on “Silence,” wrote that it “is not stillness.” The truth of that landed immediately. And yet, paradoxically, I’ve found that stillness, when given space, evokes silence.

Whyte’s work has long resonated with me for its ability to hold paradox without demanding resolution, to illuminate without over-explaining. This poem is an homage to his clarity. It is a reflection of what remains when stillness is given space to breathe, and what it, in turn, reveals.

Evening on Puget Sound, WA

Stillness

is never complete, and needs nothing to complete it. It does not arrive as a thing, but as the space between things. The quiet presence that lets the unheard rise, the unnoticed murmur find its breath. What is usually drowned out is given room to surface.

From stillness, listening deepens. It does not claim, does not insist, but holds open the door for something deeper than silence, deeper than absence. It is the vast background against which existence reveals itself. It is the light on water, showing but never holding.

Not the opposite of movement, but its source, stillness is the ground from which all things arise. The silent root beneath the branches, the pause that allows a moment to be fully met, the quiet threshold where identity softens.

In stillness, time forgets itself. The restless tide of becoming recedes, leaving only this: the steady pulse of now. And in this vast quiet, the future is not resisted, not shaped, but welcomed before it arrives, already belonging.

After stillness, the self is forgotten, leaving nothing to hold, nothing to claim. What remains has no need to take, erase, or demand. Knowing loosens its grip. Curiosity, unbound, stretches beyond its reach, finding itself surprised by what it never thought to ask.

From stillness, the artist works. It is the canvas, the quiet breath before creation. Stillness does not ask for recognition, but to be seen and accepted. When stillness is given space to breathe, it allows creation to emerge — not of itself, but through itself.

Because in stillness, everything is already here, always present, asking nothing, but to be noticed.

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