belonging. be.

THE HOUSE OF BELONGING

I awoke

this morning 

in the gold light 

turning this way

and that

thinking for 

a moment 

it was one 

day

like any other.

But 

the veil had gone 

from my 

darkened heart 

and 

I thought

it must have been the quiet 

candlelight 

that filled my room,

it must have been 

the first 

easy rhythm 

with which I breathed 

myself to sleep,

it must have been 

the prayer I said 

speaking to the otherness 

of the night.

And 

I thought 

this is the good day 

you could 

meet your love,

this is the gray day 

someone close 

to you could die.

This is the day 

you realize 

how easily the thread 

is broken 

between this world 

and the next

and I found myself 

sitting up 

in the quiet pathway 

of light,

the tawny close 

grained cedar 

burning round 

me like fire 

and all the angels 

of this housely 

heaven ascending 

through the first 

roof of light 

the sun had made.

This is the bright home 

in which I live, 

this is where 

I ask

my friends 

to come, 

this is where I want 

to love all the things 

it has taken me so long 

to learn to love.

This is the temple 

of my adult aloneness 

and I belong 

to that aloneness 

as I belong to my life.

There is no house 

like the house of belonging.

…

'The House of Belonging'

From The House of Belonging

Poems by David Whyte

© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press