Poetry for a Pandemic with David Whyte
David Whyte is a poet, author, and organizational speaker known for his keen ability to put words to the ways of the human heart. The following poem from The Bell and the Blackbird, although written some time ago, seems to speak to the current transitional space that we may be finding ourselves in. Find a quiet place to read the poem, more than once if possible.
CLEAVE by David Whyte
To hold together and to split apart
at one and the same time,
like the shock of being born,
breathing in this world
while lamenting for the one we’ve left.
No one needs to tell us
we are already on our onward way,
no one has to remind us
of our everyday and intimate
embrace
with disappearance.
We were born saying goodbye
to what we love,
we were born
in a beautiful reluctance,
not quite ready
to breathe in this new world,
we are here and we are not,
we are present while still not
wanting to admit we have arrived.
Not quite arrived in our minds
yet always arriving in the body,
always growing older
while trying to grow younger,
always in the act
of catching up,
of saying hello
or saying goodbye
finding strangely,
in each new and imagined future
the still-lived memory
of a previous,
precious life.
For reflection:
How do you find yourself in an “embrace with disappearance?”
Where are you arriving and where are you catching up?