Clouds and Sun on a Winter Day
Last evening as I was moving toward dreamtime, I was drawn to David Whyte’s poem, The Winter of Listening, about which Whyte says, within this poem is an ancient intuitive understanding of winter as a time to leave things alone, to let things remain hidden, even to themselves. … It is the intimate experience sitting alone by a fire, in silence and reverie, with both a simplification and a growing clairvoyance of what is just beginning to be made known. Of course, his words resonated deeply with my love of winter and longing to align with the rhythms of Nature.
This morning, I woke with the heaviness of worry, a sense of despair (about which Whyte thoughtfully and eloquently explores in Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Meaning of Everyday Words). As I sat with, vocalized, and allowed despair to move in and through me, I realized that this blog day finds me with no words, no inspiration, no wisdom for how we each navigate this time. That this day is calling me into silence, into winter’s listening. And so, this day, I share a bit of Whyte’s poem and another poem from a poet who I discovered, quite magically, on the Winter Solstice. Then I’ll return to the silence by the fire and in the woods out back.
All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.
And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.
Silence and winter
have led me to that
otherness.
So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for all the new life
I must call my own.
(excerpt from The Winter of Listening - David Whyte)
What the Silence Says – Marie Howe (from Magdalene poems – 2017)
I know that you think you already know but –
Wait
Longer than that.
even longer than that.
An Afternoon Walk in the Woods with Clouds, Blue Sky, Sun, and Snow