a lazy Sunday afternoon

I have been busy: in part in my mind and in part the practical, no-nonsense shuffle of work, moving and general life.  Today,  I ran across a poem that moved me and I thought I’d share it.  Written by Derek Walcott, it’s a poem that, in my estimation, points (versus directs) to unity within our worlds and ourselves. Living mindfully in the realities of life: the tension of personal power and powerlessness, the mystery of God, goodness and suffering and having a presence of mind (and body) to not take ourselves (our woes, our resentments, our aches, pains, comforts…) so bloody seriously—is  not a conquest but an awareness, a quiet knowing of sorts.  And when we get a glimpse of that “quiet knowing” this poem feels like the springtime arrival for a journey that, paradoxically, we forget we're taking.

Love after Love:

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

 

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

 

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes, 

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

-Derek Walcott