The True Love 

by David Whyte

There’s a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours
especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never
believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held
out to you this way.


I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are worthy of in this world.
Years ago in the Hebrides I remember an old man
who would walk every morning on the gray stones
to the shore of baying seals, who would press his
hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his
prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the waters.


And I think of the story of the storm and the people
waking and seeing the distant, yet familiar figure,
far across the water calling to them.
And how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking
and that calling and that moment when we have to say yes!
Except it will not come so grandly, so biblically,
but more subtly, and intimately in the face
of the one you know you have to love.
So that when we finally step out of the boat
toward them we find, everything holds us,
and everything confirms our courage.


And if you wanted to drown, you could,
But you don’t, because finally, after all
this struggle and all these years,
you don’t want to anymore.
You’ve simply had enough of drowning
and you want to live, and you want to love.
And you’ll walk across any territory,
and any darkness, however fluid,
and however dangerous to take the one
hand and the one life, you know belongs in yours.

Beautiful Poem!  It can be read many ways.  How strange to have it be recited 

at a retreat on change management - yet not so strange.  It is about having faith enough when the right moment comes to take action and let go of something in 

your life that is not working.  Something that is holding you in one place exhausting you as you continually row against the current in order to just stay where you are 

and keep what you have.  It is about taking courage in both hands, breaking free,

and moving to where your heart tells you need to go.

---Starlight

Sonnet 116

--William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

  If this be error and upon me proved,

  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

My very most favorite love poem!

Meeting and Passing
--Robert Frost

As I went down the hill along the wall
There was a gate I had leaned at for the view
And had just turned from when I first saw you
As you came up the hill. We met. But all
We did that day was mingle great and small
Footprints in summer dust as if we drew
The figure of our being less than two
But more than one as yet. Your parasol
Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust.
And all the time we talked you seemed to see
Something down there to smile at in the dust.
(Oh, it was without prejudice to me!) 
Afterward I went past what you had passed
Before we met and you what I had passed. 

The Passage

Toes and trails and tides of time 
Cast upon a heedless shore
Submerged till breathless
Breaking free
Released to try once more

Days, and weeks, and months, and years
Tumbled, scoured, gripped once more
Till polished, smoothed, 
And shining bright
We stand on that cognizant shore




(Composed this evening by Starlight)

High Flight

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Fantastic poem and close to my heart.  I have carried a scrap of newspaper containing this poem around with me for probably 25 years ever since I read it for the first time.  I pull it out often and should really memorize it.  This was written while the poet was out on a mission during WWII, an American serving in the Canadian Airforce prior to the entry of the USA into the war.  He died at the age of 19 just 3 months later in a mid-air collision.

A favorite poem of mine.

To the Harbormaster

--Frank O’Hara

I wanted to be sure to reach you;

though my ship was on the way it got caught

in some moorings.  I am always tying up

and then deciding to depart.  In storms and

at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide

around my fathomless arms, I am unable

to understand the forms of my vanity

or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder

in my hand and the sun sinking.  To

you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage

of my will.  The terrible channels where

the wind drives me against the brown lips

of the reeds are not all behind me.  Yet

I trust the sanity of my vessel; and

if it sinks it may well be in answer

to the reasoning of the eternal voices,

the waves which have kept me from reaching you.