Speaking Guide Book Poem by Brian Taylor

“In Chiang Mai
there are many shapeful chedis
in which nowhere can be seen.”

Is stillness something
or is it merely
what’s left over
when things
disappear?

How can things
which are ever-moving,
ever-changing,
not be?

Stillness is complete and perfect
when boundaries disappear.

Cattle
do not feel
the farmyard gate
pressing against
their outward-going faces.

The goat
does not feel
the rope tugging
like the endless past
at its throat.

The bird
does not break
its wing
against the window pane.

The butterfly
does not struggle
into immobility
in the tangles of the spider’s web.

The ear ceases to vibrate,
the skin to be the terminus
of an electric field.

The eye is not stabbed
by arrows of fire.

When the sea is a millpond,
a mirror to the sky above,
a darkened window
to hazy depths below,
and the air is palpable
in its stillness,
where have the waves gone?