The morning after the storm.
In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more 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
for 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
My musings~
This poem speaks of what I am longing for in the solitude that I seek. I feel an urgency to tap into that “more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world” that is there for each one of us when we peel away the layers of consciousness. David Whyte suggests that upon waking you remember whom you are and how you want to express “the vitality hidden in your sleep.” This is why I come to the cottage and why I love to wake early.
I recommend Roger Housden essay about this poem in "Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again."