WHAT I MUST TELL MYSELF
I know this house,
and this horizon,
and this world I have made.
I know this silence
and the particular treasures
and terrors
of this belonging
but I cannot 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
works 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 part
of a great migration
that will take me to another place.
And though all the things I love
may pass away and
the great family of things and people
I have made around me
will see me go,
I feel them living in me
like a great gathering
ready to reach a greater home.
When one thing dies all things
die together, and must 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 the 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