David Whyte, "Waking"

“Waking”

“Get up from your bed,
go out from your house,
follow the path you know so well,
so well that you now see nothing
and hear nothing
unless something can cry loudly to you,
and for you it seems,
even then,
no cry is louder than yours,
and in your own darkness
cries have gone unheard
as long as you can remember.

These are hard paths we tread,
but they are green and lined with leaf mould,
and we must love their contours
as we love the body branching
with its veins and tunnels of dark earth.

I know that sometimes
your body is hard like a stone,
on a path that storms break over,
embedded deeply
into that something that you think is you,
and you will not move
while the voice all around tears the air
and fills the sky with jagged light.

But sometimes, unawares,
those sounds seem to descend
as if kneeling down into you,
and you listen, strangely caught
as the terrible voice moving closer halts,
and in the silence
now arriving whispers,
Get up, I depend
on you utterly.
Everything you need
you had
the moment before
you were born.”

~ David Whyte,