Poetic Healing

Reading The Sun Magazine before falling asleep last night warmed my heart.

This article about poetry spoke to me, so I decided to call on the few poems that still rent apartments in my head.  Throughout the night, they comforted me in my confusion and grief.

And at one point, I visited all of my family members and wished them happiness, seeing that I have no idea what that means to another and being real fine with that.

It mostly seems that there is no rhyme or reason to things (although maybe there is, but I can't see it).  Poetry brings us together so we're not so alone in the Don't Know.  It even makes the Don't Know beautiful and friendly.  Intimate.

I think this will be the next poem that I will allow to take up residence in my noggin:



WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

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