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What to Remember When Waking

In that first hardly noticed moment 

in which you wake, 

coming back to this life 

from the other

more secret, moveable 

and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,

there is a small opening 

into the new day

that closes the moment 

you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small 

for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly 

will make plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible

while carrying what is hidden 

as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world

is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest 

on this earth,

you are not an accident 

amidst other accidents

you were invited 

from another and greater night

than the one from which 

you have just emerged.

Now, looking through 

the slanting light 

of the morning window toward 

the mountain presence 

of everything that can be,

what urgency calls you 

to your one love?

What shape waits 

in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting 

in the fertile sea?

In the trees 

beyond the house?

In the life you can imagine for yourself?

In the open 

and lovely 

white page 

on the waiting desk?

...

‘What to Remember When Waking’

From RIVER FLOW: New and Selected Poems

Many Rivers Press.  ©David Whyte