allow for shortness of breath
trudging through fields
and fields of endless snow

there is such quietness
you can feel noise
miles away

I have had my share of snow
and on these isolated walks
days are remote blankness

hear that amazing stillness inside
silence is the tiniest sound
sometimes from within

in the brokenness
we all need some point when we suddenly notice
the world around us

we find what we’ve been searching for
has all along
been here in the Forever

we all come from these useless whispering miles
wandering in the lost
attracted to what is nameless and felt

and here it is
snow
in the closed-knit trees chewing bird songs

we are bees maddened by too many flowers
in the unnerved sun
where solitude and oblivion are the same

Martin Willitts Jr is a retired Librarian. His poems have been in Blue Fifth Review, Comstock Review, Kentucky Review, Bitter Oleander, and many more. He won the 2013 Bill Holm Witness Poetry Contest; 2014 Broadsided award; 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; and, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2015, Editor’s Choice. He has over 20 chapbooks; plus 11 full-length collections including How to Be Silent (FutureCycle Press, 2016).