in your rags of love

...and the way forward always in the end

the way you came, the way that you followed,

the way that carried you into your future,

that brought you to this place, no matter that it had

to break your heart along the way:

the sense of having walked from far inside yourself

out into the revelation, to have risked yourself

for something that seemed to stand both inside you

and far beyond you, that called you back in the end

to the only road you could follow, walking

as you did, in your rags of love and speaking in a voice

that by night, became a prayer for safe arrival....

Excerpt from “Santiago”
From Pilgrim: Poems by David Whyte

2011


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