I pause to check the milkweed, and a caterpillar halts midbite, its face still lowered to the leaf.
I walk down my driveway at dusk, and the cottontail under the pine tree freezes, not a single twitch of ear or nose.
On the roadside, the doe stands immobile, as still as the trees that rise above her. My car passes; her soft nose doesn’t quiver. Her soft flanks don’t rise or fall. A current of air stirs only the hairs at the very tip of her tail.
I peek between the branches of the holly bush, and the redbird nestling looks straight at me, motionless, unblinking.
Every day the world is teaching me what I need to know to be in the world.
In the stir of too much motion:
Hold still.
Be quiet.
Listen.
~ Margaret Renkl, “Still” in Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss
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