David Whyte: The House of Belonging

I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that

thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.

But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and I thought

it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,

it must have been
the first easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,

it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.

And
I thought
this is the good day
you could meet your love,

this is the black day
someone close
to you could die.

This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next

and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,

the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like a fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.

This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.

This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

There is no house
like the house of belonging.

David White: Loaves and Fishes

This is not
the age of information.

This is not
the age of information.

Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.

This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

David Whyte: Working together

We shape our self  

to fit this world

and by the world  

are shaped again.

The visible  

and the invisible

working together  

in common cause,

to produce  

the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way  

the intangible air

passed at speed  

round a shaped wing

easily  

holds our weight.

So may we, in this life  

trust

to those elements  

we have yet to see

or imagine,  

and look for the true

shape of our own self  

by forming it well

to the great 
intangibles about us

David Whyte: Everything Is Waiting For You

(After Derek Mahon)

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone.  As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions.  To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings.  Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice.  You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation.  The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last.  All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves.  Everything is waiting for you.

David Whyte: The Well of Grief

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
 
turning down to its black water
to the place that we can not breathe
 
will never know
the source from which we drink
the secret water cold and clear
 
nor find in the darkness
the small gold coins
thrown by those who wished for something else

David Whyte: Start close in

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people's questions,
don't let them
smother something
simple.

To find
another's voice
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don't follow
someone else's
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don't mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.

David Whyte: Self-portrait

It doesn't interest me if there is one God

or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel

abandoned,

if you can know despair or see it in others.

I want to know

if you are prepared to live in the world

with its harsh need

to change you.  If you can look back

with firm eye,

saying this is where I stand.  I want to know

if you know

how to melt into that fierce heat of living,

falling toward

the center of your longing.  I want to know

if you are willing

to live, day by day, with the consequence of love

and the bitter

unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even

the gods speak of God.

David Whyte: Sometimes

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest

breathing

like the ones

in the old stories

who could cross

a shimmering bed of dry leaves

without a sound,

you come

to a place

whose only task

is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests

conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what

you are doing right now,

and

to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,

questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,

questions

that have patiently

waited for you,

questions

that have no right

to go away.

David Whyte: The Journey

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be

inscribed across

the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving
you are arriving.