Say Less

True listeners open the ear in the heart.
They love the gossip of raindrops,
the breaking news of Spring peepers.

Say less than you mean.
Grace is the gift of subtraction.
The trembling crystal of a chickadee
proclaims the whole Godspell.

Tell as little as a willow by a pond
where the heron glides away
on the first breath of twilight.

And if you must speak, leave
a rippled stillness between words,
the kind of mirror where
the long-beaked huntress might pause

on one leg on a golden afternoon.
Be more like the moon between clouds,
until your silences say everything.

by Alfred K. Lamotte
from The Nectar of This Breath

(Listen to our spring peepers here.)