Still, what I want in my life
Mary Oliver, House of Light
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—
that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and falling.
And I do.
The end of this journey…
Once again, David Whyte’s words say it so well that there is little left for me to write.
FINISTERRE
The road in the end,
FINISTERRE
taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean:
no way to your future now
but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water,
going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn’t let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you had brought
and light their illumined corners;
and to read them as they drifted on the late western light;
to empty your bags;
to sort this and to leave that;
to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that brought you here
right at the water’s edge,
not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you would still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves.
in DAVID WHYTE: ESSENTIALS
© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press
https://davidwhyte.com/collections/books/products/david-whyte-essentials
Bicycle of the month
