7
" MAMEEN
Be infinitessimal under that sky, a creature
even the sailing hawk misses, a wraith
among the rocks where the mist parts slowly.
Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed
by circumstance, how great reputations
dissolve with infirmity and how you,
in particular, live a hairsbreadth from losing
everyone you hold dear.
Then, look back down the path as if seeing
your past and then south over the hazy blue
coast as if present to a wide future.
Remember the way you are all possibilities
you can see and how you live best
as an appreciator of horizons,
whether you reach them or not.
Admit that once you have got up
from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary, you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim,
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain,
who helped to make it. "
― David Whyte , River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007
9
" Seeing from a high window the three years old boy caught by sunlight, peeing in the garden, I am suddenly aware why those small statues abound gracing our squares and piazzas! The form is eternal delight, and the source of that long golden arch of urine a blessing of curved tummy and bended knees. Hands clapped on bottom, eyes concentrated somewhere between source and target, amazed, enraptured, and miracle again, the golden line between subject and object made clear, whose author, transcending duality, looks out at a world intimately experiencing his arrival. "
― David Whyte , River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007
11
" THE SEVEN STREAMS
Come down drenched, at the end of May,
with the cold rain so far into your bones
that nothing will warm you
except your own walking
and let the sun come out at the day's end
by Slievenaglasha with the rainbows doubling
over Mulloch Mor and see your clothes
steaming in the bright air. Be a provenance
of something gathered, a summation of
previous intuitions, let your vulnerabilities
walking on the cracked sliding limestone
be this time, not a weakness, but a faculty
for understanding what's about
to happen. Stand above the Seven Streams
letting the deep down current surface
around you, then branch and branch
as they do, back into the mountain
and as if you were able for that flow,
say the few necessary words
and walk on, broader and cleansed
for having imagined. "
― David Whyte , River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007
