Touching the Real

Zen is the way
the morning air touches your cheek
before you reach for your phone.

It is the hum beneath the hum —
the sound your own breath makes
when you stop listening for the next thing.

Machines can’t taste the stillness
of tea cooling in the cup,
or the secret the sky keeps
between each cloud.

The world doesn’t ask us
to turn it off,
only to look again —
to see the hand inside the glove,
the pulse beneath the glass,
the heartbeat that never left the room.

To be in touch
is not to withdraw,
but to meet the world
before it becomes
a notification.

© Susie Stiles-Wolf