The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water, going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn’t let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that;
to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water’s edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves.

from David Whyte’s collection, Pilgrim
©2012 Many Rivers Press
Posted with kind permission from the poet


David Whyte
David Whyte

David Whyte is an internationally renowned poet and author, and a scintillating and moving speaker. Behind these talents lies a very physical attempt to give voice to the wellsprings of human identity, human striving and, most difficult of all, the possibilities for human happiness. He draws from hundreds of memorized poems, his own and those of other beloved poets such as Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Keats, Pablo Neruda, Fleur Adcock and the sonnets of Shakespeare. He is the author of ten books of poetry, three books of prose on the transformative nature of work; a widely-acclaimed, best-selling book of essays, and an extensive audio collection.

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Poetry