I’ve been reading Sara Maitland’s A Book of Silence. I haven’t finished it yet but my quest for as much silence as is possible in my current life has made it an obvious reading choice. It’s a difficult thing to achieve is silence. Even the book starts off “talky.” She tells about her early familial history, about her religious movement from Anglicanism to Catholicism, about her days in the feminist g/literati.

Not that the book isn’t worth reading. I will continue over coffee and lunch breaks to run to the cafe and sit with espresso and text.

I get closer and closer to the time when I will go for a 30-day silent retreat. Hopefully on some land somewhere, with permission, I can camp silently. No other people, just the rustle of night beasts under the vegetative canopy and the sound that stars make as they wheel.

30 days of listening while beading, of quiet permission, the doors unlocked and the demons will rumble, surfacing. Then the quick flash of words and rhythm.

All I want to do is write a book of poetry.