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“The House of Belonging” by David Whyte

The House of Belonging

I awoke
  this morning
  in the gold light
  turning this way
  and that

thinking for
  a moment
  it was one
  day
  like any other.

But
  the veil had gone
  from my
  darkened heart
  and
  I thought

it must have been the quiet
  candlelight
  that filled my room,

it must have been
  the first
  easy rhythm
  with which I breathed
  myself to sleep,

it must have been
  the prayer I said
  speaking to the otherness
  of the night.

And
  I thought
  this is the good day
  you could
  meet your love,

this is the gray day
  someone close
  to you could die.

This is the day
  you realize
  how easily the thread
  is broken
  between this world
  and the next

and I found myself
  sitting up
  in the quiet pathway
  of light,

the tawny
  close grained cedar
  burning round
  me like fire
  and all the angels of this housely
  heaven ascending
  through the first
  roof of light
  the sun has made.

This is the bright home
  in which I live,
  this is where
  I ask
  my friends
  to come,
  this is where I want
  to love all the things
  it has taken me so long
  to learn to love.

This is the temple
  of my adult aloneness
  and I belong
  to that aloneness
  as I belong to my life.

There is no house
  like the house of belonging.

.

David Whyte, 1955–

© 2003 David Whyte
“The House of Belonging” from River Flow: New & Selected Poems

Photo by Orlova Maria on Unsplash

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