woodland

by David Whyte

Excerpt  from “Santiago”

From PILGRIM: Poems by David Whyte

THE ONLY ROAD YOU COULD FOLLOW

The road seen, then not seen, the hillside

hiding then revealing the way you should take,

the road dropping away from you as if leaving you

to walk on thin air, then catching you, holding you up,

when you thought you would fall - 

and the way forward always in the end, the way

that 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 sometimes had to take your promise from you,

no matter that it always 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...