Fishing - David Whyte

Fishing

After her death, I sat by the river
in Burnsall under the sign of the Red Lion
where we used to sit companionable
looking out over drinks and the mellow stone
bridge to the stream beyond
taking our casual proximity for granted,
shifting easily in our measured
taken-for-granted sovereign rights,
as two people together, still alive,
moving from talk, to silence, to joke.

And I thought of her now
in some bright nowhere
and me left casting into places
I'd never reached before, the line curling
against a sky she could not see,
fishing in the heady flow
for a dart or a glimmer,
just a remembrance
in the moving mirror
and sensing for the first time
the grip of a pure
and flowing absence.

So strange it was
to slip away
in the stream
from a hard won
maturity,
to feel abandoned,
the line spooling,
the bridge gone,
even the ground aswim,
a river going nowhere,
my hook snagging on thin air
and nothing hidden
in the flowing world
to catch, or bite, or tug again.

David Whyte, Everything Is Waiting For You

Quote

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -Gil Bailie