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18 Mar 2022
Alex C
Eisenberg
Full Moon
Apr 1st
To Know
Mar 2nd
After David Whyte’s Self Portrait and
Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s The Invitation
It doesn't interest me what wealth you have built
even if you have built it from nothing.
I want to know what your heart is made of
and if it is strong enough to weather the storms
of living in the flesh of this world;
if it is flexible enough to bend without snapping
in the humility and hubris of growth;
if you are brave enough to reach your roots deep
into the well of grief, to drink.
I want to know if you are willing to stretch yourself
far out into the world with quaking limbs
and unfurl a blossom-filled hand as an offering
of tender beauty to share with all who pass.
Will you let them pluck, freely, a ripened fruit
from your delicious being? I want to know
if you will offer these gifts, dripping from your fingers
in a rich display of dressing-down, and release;
and if you are willing to do this year after year
though it will leave you exposed, arid, empty, cold.
I want to know if you can be warmed
by your own kindness; if your heart is made
of wood and blood; if you are willing to live
by giving of yourself to earth and air and other;
to rot, to burn, to turn with time, to change.
It doesn’t interest me what you’ve managed to save.
I want to know what you’ve given away.
Behind the poem...
I wrote To Know after David Whyte's poem, Self-Portrait – a work which prompted Oriah Mountain Dreamer to pen her arguably more famous poem in the same style, The Invitation. Both poems found me in a similar place in life: stripped down, grasping for the truth at the roots of things. Having memorized Whyte's poem and delved deeper into Oriah's by reading her book of the same name, I felt moved, eventually, to create my own version. Its inspiration is the journey of loss and discovery I found myself walking – and too, what was being asked of me to walk it well.
