In that first
hardly noticed
moment
in which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from that secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.
What you can plan
is too small for you
to live.
What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
in the vitality
hidden in your sleep.
To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.
To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.
You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.
Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely white page
on the waiting desk?
-David Whyte (from The House of Belonging)
Photo by Amber Schley Iragui
< POETRY WEDNESDAY>
Molly Sabourin
4
I’ve never been a night person – in that the nights tend to fill me with dread. Mornings, though, particularly those first quiet moments spent drinking that first cup of coffee, make me feel hopeful and brave again. Yes, it’s the planning, I believe, that hinders my ability to carry that hope and courage into the busyness of my afternoons. This poem is profoundly insightful, Jenny. Thank you so much for sharing it!
Beth Johnson
4
Perhaps I am having a sad moment but that poem in all its loveliness and truth makes me want to weep. Weep for the time I waste and weep that I am not an accident or a troubled guest on this earth. Thank you for this post. And also I must thank you again for last week’s poem. Could I be so bold to say that applying its sentiments has (at least for one week and hopefully longer) changed my life? Less computer. More children, family, home. Love to you.
Amber
4
“What you can plan / is too small for you / to live”
What a wonderful relief–I’m such a poor planner that I wouldn’t want to have to depend on myself there. I can see why you’ve fallen for Mr Whyte! Simple and beautiful, and so full at once. Like Beth, a little sad, but sad in the best way ever, the way life is a little sad. The way you living in Hawaii is absolutely wonderful and a little sad in that you are so far away.
Kris
4
The lines about not being and accident, not being a troubled guest were just what I needed to read tonight.
And what urgency calls us to our one love? I think that small line will need to be written out so I can look at it repeatedly.
Bethany
4
Yes. This comfort is just what I needed this morning. “you were invited from another and greater night than the one from which you have just emerged.” Reassuring and full. Also, “What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky?” – I was talking about death with the boys last night, trying to explain it like this. But it’s great to think of the metaphor as taking place before death, right here, too.
Anna J
4
Like Amber, I find great relief in the release from planning “control” in this poem. It is timely, as I have just had a week of such frenetic efforts on my part that I finally just stopped and “gave up,” remembering that God doesn’t need my abilities in order to turn our earth :-)
Thanks for sharing this lovely poem, by a poet who is new to me [like so many of the Poetry Wednesday sharings!]