Silence Poem by Michael Maxwell Steer

Slowly as casual voices decline
a silence steals across the room,
flooding the space with richest wine
and colouring the garden with sunlit blossom.

Parking my mind in the greater Mind
I hover on sleep's borderline,
and in the lucid no-man's-land
a stateless clarity I find

where prayer is pregnant with intention,
and thought occurs in wordless space
expanding all my flat dimensions.
a miracle of abundant grace.

An hour passes, speech returns,
restoring me my mind refreshed.
Amazing what it is one learns
from greater minds when thus enmeshed.

What this experience demonstrates
is consciousness's highest state
cannot be reached in isolation,
but requires collaboration.


Shaftesbury Quaker Meeting 21/2/2014