David Whyte’s The Journey

‘The Journey’ was written for a friend of the poet’s undergoing a difficult time at the end of a relationship. Watching the black silhouettes of geese inscribing lines across the sky, he muses that a departure in the dying light is actually also an arrival. 

The Journey

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving.
Even as the light fades quickly now,
you are arriving.

David Whyte

From ‘The House of Belonging’