Sydney Royal Botamical Garden
On my solitary sojourn
Decemher 25, 2016
TO THOSE WHO LIVE ALONE
By David Whyte
It happens to those
who live alone
that they feel sure
of visitors
when no one else is there.
Until the one day
and the one particular hour
working in the
quiet garden,
when they realize
at once
that all along
they have been
an invitation
to everything
and every kind of trouble
and that life happens by
to those who inhabit silence
like the bees visiting
the tall mallow
on their legs of gold,
or the wasps
going from door to door
in the tall forest
of the daisies.
I have my freedom today
because nothing
really happened
and nobody came to see me,
only the slow
growing of the garden
in the summer heat
and the silence of that
unborn life
making itself known at my desk,
my hands still dark
with the crumbling soil
as I write
and watch
the first lines
of a new poem
like flowers
of scarlet fire
coming to fullness
in a clear light.
...
‘It Happens to Those Who Live Alone’
From The House of Belonging
© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press
Garden Doors
Photo © David Whyte
Whidbey Island 2015
