---
description: A poem about the small pulls toward the phone, the cupboard, the TV, and the quiet that opens when you stop following them. Presence as not becoming.
title: Each Small Bell
---

[Still Lantern](https://www.stilllantern.com/)

[About](https://www.stilllantern.com/about) [Contact](mailto:roger.katona@gmail.com)

# Each Small Bell

A poem about the small pulls toward the phone, the cupboard, the TV, and the quiet that opens when you stop following them. Presence as not becoming.

All morning, thoughts cross the room,  
quick as birds across a window,  
and behind each one a brightness,  
a small lean in the chest,  
leaning toward the phone,  
then the cupboard, then the remote.

It never said what it would give.  
It only said  
that there was better than here,  
and here, which had been enough,  
was suddenly not enough.

I used to go.  
I called the going living,  
this rising to each small bell,  
a toll at every rising,  
this becoming,  
born a hundred times by noon  
into someone almost satisfied,  
then gone as quickly as it came.

But once, mid-reach,  
I began to ask  
what all this reaching paid.

I kept a ledger.  
On one side, the promise:  
ease, a finished feeling,  
a moment better than this one.  
On the other, what arrived:  
a feed, a taste, a rerun,  
each of them exactly what it was,  
and none of them the promise.

How long had I been paying?

So now the thought goes by  
and I watch it the way  
one watches a peddler open his case,  
with interest, even fondness,  
and nothing bought.

The phone stays dark on the table,  
only a phone.  
The cupboard stays closed,  
and the hunger that was never hunger passes.  
The television stays a black glass,  
holding only the room.

All it ever was:  
a feeling arriving  
and a hand that used to follow,  
learning not to follow,  
learning it can stay.

And the morning, left alone,  
turns out to be wide.  
Where the becoming was,  
a quiet,  
and the quiet asks for nothing.

So this is what they meant by here:  
not a place to get to,  
only what is left:  
no promise, no one to become.

Somewhere a small bell rings.  
I let it ring.

If you’d prefer to read this offline, you can download a PDF version below.

Written and shared by Roger Katona

Contact: [roger.katona@gmail.com](mailto:roger.katona@gmail.com)

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