The Art of Stillness

There's something sacred about a summer afternoon where everything slows down. The world itself seems to pause. Birds go quiet, the wind forgets its path, and time feels like it's folding in on itself. That's the moment I wanted to capture in my new poem, "A Stillness in Sun."

This poem is written in the pantoum form, an old and hypnotic structure that relies on repetition, with lines reappearing in a patterned echo. The form itself mirrors the experience of a lazy afternoon: the loop of half-thoughts, the lull of heat, the sense that nothing is moving forward and yet everything is quietly changing beneath the surface.

In this poem, time becomes strange. The body and the mind slow down, blending waking and dreaming. There's a kind of spell cast in those long, golden hours where the light settles thick and warm over the skin, and the ordinary becomes distant; almost mythic. Shadows stretch like cats. Dreams slide under doors. Even your own breath becomes a kind of tide.

What I love about writing in this form is the way it allows meaning to shift just slightly with each repetition. A line might return, but it doesn't feel the quite the same. That's the magic of summer stillness, too: it feels like nothing is happening, but everything is quietly unfolding.

I hope this poem invites you into that moment. The next time you find yourself caught in the stillness of a sun-drenched afternoon, I hope you let yourself drift there for a while. No expectations, no deadlines. Just the gold, the quiet, and the slow breath of time out of joint.

A Stillness In Sun

The afternoon drapes soft across the land,

a golden hush that folds the world in light.

We breathe like tide, slow-motion and unplanned,

time curling in the heat, no end in sight.

A golden hush that folds the world in light

the shadows stretch like cats along the floor.

Time curling in the heat, no end in sight,

and dreams slip through the cracks beneath the door.

The shadows stretch like cats along the floor,

the air is thick with sleep and distant hum.

And dreams slip through the cracks beneath the door,

where even thoughts grow heavy, slow, and dumb.

The air is thick with sleep and distant hum,

we breathe like tide, slow-motion and unplanned,

where even thoughts grow heavy, slow, and dumb

the afternoon drapes soft across the land.

E. C. Mira