Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing like the ones
in the old stories...
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests...
...Requests to stop what
you are doing right now
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life....
To all that is chaotic in you,
let there come silence.
Let there be a calming of the clamoring,
a stilling of the voices
that have laid their claim on you,
that have made their home in you
that go with you even to the holy places
but will not let you rest,
will not let you hear your life with wholeness.