The Poet: David Whyte, "The Winter of Listening"

"The Winter of Listening"

"No one but me by the fire,

my hands burning red in the palms while

the night wind carries everything away outside.

All this petty worry while the great cloak

of the sky grows dark and intense

round every living thing.

What is precious inside us does not

care to be known by the mind

in ways that diminish its presence.

What we strive for in perfection

is not what turns us into the lit angel we desire,

what disturbs and then nourishes

has everything we need.

What we hate in ourselves

is what we cannot know in ourselves but

what is true to the pattern does not need

to be explained.

Inside everyone is a great shout of joy

waiting to be born.

Even with the summer so far off

I feel it grown in me now and ready

to arrive in the world.

All those years listening to those

who had nothing to say.

All those years forgetting how everything

has its own voice to make itself heard.

All those years forgetting how easily

you can belong to everything

simply by listening.

And the slow difficulty

of remembering how everything

is born from an opposite

and miraculous otherness.

Silence and winter

has led me to that otherness.

So let this winter of listening

be enough for the new life

I must call my own."

- David Whyte,

"The House of Belonging"