Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest,

breathing

like the ones

in the old stories,

who could cross

a shimmering bed of leaves

without a sound,

you come to a place

whose only task

is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what

you are doing right now,

and

to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,

questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,

questions

that have patiently

waited for you,

questions

that have no right

to go away.

~David Whyte

how to pay attention to life breathing us…..

inquiry for today~ can you allow yourself to actually look around you today?

how did I not remember my fierceness?

The wind, skirting the dock, lifts a veil and I feel a sudden relief.

I watch the endless variations of wave and think, what will be will be.

I have arrived beyond yes and no.

Now the loss of what is familiar

and the fear of what might come are torn.

Now my deeper eyes appear with nothing between them and the world.

The wind buffs my soul and I slip beneath my name.

A lone duck lands, its bottomless eye conveying some message

beyond words. I call the duck closer by the mere authenticity

of my being. Now the duck glides toward me,

swimming imperceptibly, its efforts below unseen on the surface.

As it nears, I admit that I am as alone as that bird,

gliding on a vast and changing sea, yet at one with the Universe. 

~Mark Nepo