Belonging and Beloving

 

The poem below has haunted me for a little more than a year. I loved it prior to the pandemics but imposed isolation found me seeking some kind of affirmation and resource for all the emotions which were now carried out inside four walls. When paired with the Seamus Heaney poem yesterday, I am consoled by shafts of light through which angels descend and ascend. I am consoled by what transcends the hard walls and confinement. I find a kind of hope in the process of a veil lifting from a darkened heart and the revelations of simple ordinary quotidian delights. All of this goes into our need to belong and be-loved.

“The House of Belonging”

Written by David Whyte

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.