What the Country Knows
The hills do not hurry toward anything.
They have been here through every version of the dark
and they will be here after,
patient as the names of things.
I am learning to want what is already here —
the crow's opinion of the morning,
the particular cold that comes before the snow decides,
the kitchen window holding the last of the light.
There is a life inside the slowing down
that the noise was always covering.
I find it in the ordinary hour,
in the soup, in the stillness, in the dark that asks nothing.
artwork and poetry ©Stacy Stephens