The silence of the storm dominated everything. There are no words to describe a quiet so potent. I knew the snow was echoing a stillness that exists, hidden, in everything. I do not understand how I suddenly knew this, but the knowledge filled me. I saw that this stillness generates all life. And sitting there in the snow, I wept at the profound sound and power of that silence. It was hard to witness its beauty, knowing I'd lived many years never suspecting it was there.
Dozens of starfishes
Were creeping. It was
As though the mud were a sky
And enormous, imperfect stars
Moved across it as slowly
As the actual stars cross heaven.
All at once, they stopped,
And as if they had simply
Increased their receptivity
To gravity they sank down
Into the mud; they faded down
Into it and lay still; and by the time
Pink of sunset broke across them
They were as invisible
As the true stars at daybreak.