Life’s a Movie in Motion

There is a stillness today.
Even the leaves hang in flight,
draped across the air.

And sounds,
those that would flow on other afternoons,
lie beneath the wide oak’s trunk in the valley.

Sometimes I catch my breath and hold it with a firm grasp,
lest it set time in motion,
and I wait here in the calm gap before I exhale.

And when the breath escapes,
the leaves fall,
and all the sounds clatter along the fields and through the branches.

Then the movie begins again,
and the actors clang,
one against the other,
rehearsing how to live despite those heavy knocks that jar their sides.