Ode to Peace

They told me you were stillness: the lake with no wind, the held breath, the shut door, the white and waiting room where nothing is allowed to move.

I believed them and searched for the place where everything stops.

But I found you instead under a palm laid flat on my chest, a slow breath first in, then out, the beat of my heart, tireless, and certain, saying again, again, again.

You are not the silence after the drum. You are the rhythm and each sounding. You are the soft fist in the dark of the ribs, opening, closing, opening, refusing to be dissuaded of its love for the next beat, and the next, and the next.

We must unlearn the myths that abound. Let us call you what you are: not the war’s end laid out cold and quiet, but the newborn’s furious tenderness, the rhythm that has to be made and made again, all day, all night, the work that never finishes because it is alive, because it wants to stay.

And I feel it everywhere, in the lapping of the tides, in dusks creeping into dawn, the universe pulsing to the rhythm my chest keeps, peace not a stopping but a beginning, again and again.

I raise my hands to my heart space, bow my head, and ask that you teach me, sweet peace, the steps of your dance, and I will move along the path to your rhythm, and we will dance in each other’s embrace.