Poetry Friday

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WHAT I MUST TELL MYSELF

I know this house
so well,
and this horizon,
and this world
I have made.
from my thoughts.

I know this quiet
and the particular
treasures
and terrors
of my own
silence

but I do not
know the world
to which
I am going.

I have only
this breath
and this presence
for my wings
and they carry me
in my body
whatever I do
from one
hushed moment
to another.

I know
my innocence
and I know
my unknowing
but for all my successes
I go through life
like a blind child
who cannot see,
arms outstretched
trying to put together
a world.

And the world
seems to work
on my behalf
catching me
in its arms
when I go too far.

I don’t know what
I could have done
to have earned
such faith.

Watching
the geese
go south
I find
that even
in silence
and even
in stillness
and even
in my home
alone
without a thought
or a movement
I am forever part
of a great migration
that will take me
to another place.

And though all
the things I love
may pass away
and all the great family
of things and people
I have made
around me
will see me go,

I feel they will always
live in me
like a great gathering
ready to reach
a greater home.

When one thing dies
all things
die together,
and must learn
to live again
in a different way,

when one thing
is missing
everything is missing,
and must be
found again
in a new whole

and everything
wants to be complete,
everything wants
to go home
and the geese
traveling south
are like the shadow
of my breath
flying into darkness
on great heart-beats
to an unknown land
where I belong.

This morning they have
found me,
full of faith,
like a blind child,
nestled in their feathers,
following the great coast
to a home I cannot see.

…

From
WHAT I MUST TELL MYSELF
In ‘The House of Belonging’
© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

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