The Paths Are Many, The Way Is One…
Sunday in the city...
Foto by Vanessa Lillian
So yesterday, Vanessa and Izze and I got into my truck and headed up to Columbus to meet some friends and do some shopping for the house and the Fur Peace Ranch. I don’t do Facebook, but Vanessa does, of course, and when she posted this great picture of Izze and myself she got lots of comments. I find it interesting that many people find it singular that I would go shopping myself. Now, yesterday was a beautiful day here in Ohio and I could have gone for a great motorcycle ride, but with me being gone so much of the time on the road, I just couldn’t pass up this opportunity to spend time with my family here in Ohio. As for buying in bulk… why pay retail? Right?
Anyway, in the spirit of synchronicity my old college pal, Paul Wasserman sent me this great poem which arrived at just the right time.
My Daughter Asleep
Carrying a child,
I carry a bundle of sleeping
future appearances.
I carry my daughter
adrift on my shoulder,
dreaming her slender dreams
and I carry her beneath the window,
watching her moon lit palm open and close
like a tiny folded map,
each line a path that leads where I can’t go,
so that I read her palm not knowing what I read
and
walk with her in moon light on the landing,
not knowing with whom I walk,
making invisible prayers to go on with her where
I can’t go,
conversing with so many unknowns that must know her more
intimately than I do.
And so to these unspoken shadows and this broad night
I make a quiet request to the great parental darkness
to hold her when I cannot, to comfort her when I am gone,
to help her learn to love the unknown for itself,
to take it gladly like a lantern for the way before her,
to help her see where ordinary light will not help her,
where happiness has fled, where faith will not reach.
My prayer tonight for the great and hidden symmetries of life
to reward this faith I have and twin her passages of loneliness with friendship,
her exiles with home coming, her first awkward steps with promised onward leaps.
May she find in all this, day or night, the beautiful centrality of pure opposites,
may she discover before she grows old, not to choose so easily between past and present,
may she find in one or the other her gifts acknowledged.
And so as I helped to name her, I help to name these powers,
I bring to life what is needed, I invoke the help she’ll want
following those moonlit lines into a future uncradled by me but parented by all I call.
As she grows away from me, may these life lines grow with her, keep her safe,
so
with my open palm whose lines have run before her to make a safer way,
I hold her smooth cheek and bless her this night into all these other unknown
nights to come.
-David Whyte
Now as you can see from the fotos, I won’t be carrying her over my shoulder any more and my son Zach is now a good three inches taller than I. Still and all, the sentiment remains… deep and powerful! I know there is a grand future for my children!
Wally, Cat, Grateful, Jorma, Izze & Hurl
Foto by Vanessa Lillian
Breaking bread with dear friends as Winter thinks about waning… very, very nice…
Onward indeed!
