Press Send Poetry

Last Sunday, I was able to participate in a wonderful event called Dancing on the Fragile Edge of the World: A Scholarship Concert of Music and Poetry with Michael S. Glaser (my former college professor), Brian Ganz, and Deanna Nikaido. I’d like to share one of the featured readings from this event here in an effort to share the love, light, and positive energy that the event gave to me.

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

— David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press

I worry; you’re so good at hiding things,
like grit between your teeth, or
his baseball stats, her diminishing frame. Your heart is a
container full and piled high, your hands those of a thief,
gloved and stealthy, your chest a locked door.
I know the spot and still cannot find it.
Each sleep brings a chance, I think now I am here,
but the scent dies, trail dissolves,
your smile shakes the dream: “Everything is fine, go back to sleep.”