David Whyte's House of Belonging

By Brian Smith


David Whyte's "The House of Belonging," which elegantly captures the power of connection to sustain and nourish us.

I awoke, this morning, in the gold light
turning this way and that

thinking for a moment, it was one day,
like any other.

But, the veil had gone, from my darkened heart,
and I thought

it must have been the quiet candlelight
that filled my room,

it must have been the first easy rhythm
with which I breathed myself to sleep,

it must have been the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness of the night.

And I thought,
This is a good day
you could meet your love,

this is the black day,
someone close to you could die...

This is the day you realize,
how easily the thread is broken
between this world
and the next.

And I found myself sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,

the tawny close grained cedar
burning round me like a fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first roof of light
the sun has made.

This is the bright home in which I live,
this is where I ask
my friends to come,
this is where I want to love
all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.

This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

There is no house like the house of belonging.
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I have to agree with this one admiring reviewer of David Whyte's poetry, "He speaks to a generation now learning to accept the difficult, i.e., that not all dreams are possible but that new hopes can rise to take their place, that there is a continuance of life after what one believed to be an `only' love, and that solitude can be a genesis site for constructive activity, realization and joy."