Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired

the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

-- David Whyte

Little Tujunga Canyon, morning

A bizarre confluence of the planets has brought about the insistent appearance of David Whyte 

“I returned to poetry as a more precise way to describe the world --- more precise than science.”

 I've been listening to him (thanks to NW) at seven in the morning when I bomb down the 170 towards my beloved barn, great scatterings of clouds, primping Key West-style along the way.  And Marta, who has moved to Concord, MA and sends me mouthwateringly gorgeous phone-cam pictures of apple trees and fields and nice-looking people in normal-looking clothes walking non-neurotic-looking dogs, has been whispering his name to me for years now.  And lovely Wendy, with whom I write every day, keeps this poem on her desk.  

I should have my ears boxed.  Isn't it funny how you don't listen until you're ready to listen?