The Winter of Listening

The Winter of Listening

by David Whyte

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.