21/01/2023
Forgiveness
THE GLEAM
Sometimes,
in the midst
of every difficult,
and everyday
awkward
way, you try to
make your
onward way,
sometimes
sitting down
at the edge
of everything
that has made you
too tired
to take
another step,
there’s that
caught sight,
now here,
now gone
of a half imagined
wavering light
just among
the trees
just a gleam
or a wisp
of white gold
in the dying sun
a strange kind
of beckoning,
just about
to lead you on,
an ache
outlined
so intimately
as it is,
against
all of the
daily doings
and habits
you have
labeled
so lovingly
as sins,
but now,
in the precious last
of the failing light,
the place you
should have gone
all those years ago
is still, it seems,
willing
to invite you again,
simpler this time,
not too far away,
touchable now,
and within reach
just a single step
on the other side
of what you will always
come to call
in the end,
forgiveness.
…
Beckoning Sunset
Photo © David Whyte
Garza, Nosara, Costa Rica
January 10th 2023
…
THE GLEAM
in ‘Still Possible’
Many Rivers Press January 2022
Walking beneath the trees, in the dappled tropical light this morning, book in hand, and on my way to the ocean, I began to memorize this poem: a process which almost always leads to a little revision. So here is an ever so slightly revised version of a poem I wrote for a very close friend going through that process of hesitation, which as a friend you know is just a prelude to a momentous self-forgiveness and to their moving on. As an extra bonus, the piece just happened to marry very well with the sunset I glimpsed last night. DW
