Sometimes it feels this way. Sometimes it does not. It is a nice little poem to begin the day with.
Daily Archives: August 13, 2013
dog’s life
Sometimes
I registered to attend David Whyte’s retreat called Poetry in the Woods in November. His poetry speaks to my heart and the retreat is about being in touch with the heart.
I spent considerable time today talking about what I love: teaching and learning. I know I will miss each of them and want them in my life in some form. What I do not want is to be involved in teaching and learning focused on rules and not children. It is important for me as I enter this phase not to assume answers, but to be open to questions, particularly prickly ones. They are the ones I sometimes turn away from. I need to turn to them, receive them, and hold them gently.
I need to let questions find a space to emerge. which suggests less trampling through the forest and more quiet approaches. It is where the wisdom appears from, those questions which need my silence to be heard.
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,
who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests,
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now.
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.