​The Heartbreak that brought us here

Winter Friend, Stewart Park, 2020

I wasn’t sure what to write for you today. My brother Ricky passed away Saturday and everything is touched now by his absence. I know that sending out this blog, like sending out a letter, poem, book or article is a way to send up a smoke signal: I am here. This is me. Where are you? Who are you? 
 
My brother was a closet-poet and filled journals of his poetry throughout high school. He was a big thinker who lived courageously with schizophrenia his entire adult life. Those poems have long been lost. 
 
I will let my heart continue to break open on the page, and off. I will read poetry and essays that lift my spirit and reveal to me a path through this winter loss. I will take my daily walks and listen.

I will let spring arrive on its own, as it will. 
 
 I am here. This is me. Where are you? Who are you? 
 
 
WINTER GRIEF
 
Let the rest 
in this rested place 
rest for you.
Let the birds sing 
and the geese call
and the sky race
from west to east 
when you cannot raise 
a wing to fly.
 
Let evening
trace your loss 
in the stonework
against a fading sky.
 
So that 
you can give up
and give in
and be given back to,
so that you can let
winter
come and live
fully inside you,
so that
you can
retrace
the loving path
of heartbreak 
that brought you here. 
 
So you can cry alone
and be alone
so you can let 
yourself alone
to be lost,
so you can
let the one 
you have lost
alone, so that
you can let
the one 
you have lost 
have their 
own life 
and even
their own 
death
without you.
 
So the world
and everyone 
who has ever lived 
and ever died
can come and go 
as they please.
 
So you can
let yourself 
not know, what 
not knowing 
means.
 
So that
you can be
even more generous 
in your letting go
than they 
were 
in their leaving.
 
So that you can
let winter 
be winter.
 
So that you can let 
the world alone
to think of spring.
…
WINTER GRIEF
From
THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD
Poetry by David Whyte
APRIL 2018 © David Whyte and Many Rivers Press 

“The grief of losing a loved one, the need to walk, to remember, to heal when you cannot heal, to remember what you do not wish to remember. The unconscious call for invisible help, and the not knowing consciously, how, in any way, to ask for it, the way everything refuses to console until we are ready for that consolation. The way winter turns to spring.“  David Whyte 
 

Winter Grief, 2020