A Poem Read To Me On An Airplane This Week...

I had a strange and wonderful conversation with a man who made me comfortable and, at the same time, uncomfortable on an airplane this week. 

In the course of our discussion he paused and asked if I liked poetry.  I told him I did and he asked if I would mind if he read me a poem.  I told him I would like that. 

(What else do you say to a man who asks you if he can read you a poem on an airplane when he is in the aisle seat and you are by the window?)

I thought this was a beautiful poem.  It spoke to me.  I'm not sure of everything it said to me, but I felt like I could understand a little.  And that perhaps the author understood me a little, too.

The House of Belonging

I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that

thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.

But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and I thought

it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,

it must have been
the first easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,

it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.

And
I thought
this is the good day
you could meet your love,

this is the black day
someone close
to you could die.

This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next

and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,

the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like a fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.

This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.

This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

There is no house
like the house of belonging.

~ David Whyte ~