1033. It Happens To Those Who Live Alone - David Whyte

It Happens To Those Who Live Alone - David Whyte

It happens to those

who live alone

that they feel sure

of visitors

when no one else

is there,

until the one day 

and one particular

hour

working in the 

quiet garden,

when they realize

at once, that all along 

they have been 

an invitation

to everything

and every kind of trouble

and that life

happens by

to those who inhabit

silence

like the bees

visiting

the tall mallow

on their legs of gold,

or the wasps

going from door to door

in the tall forest 

of the daisies.

I have my freedom

today

because

nothing really happened

and nobody came

to see me.

Only the slow

growing of the garden 

in the summer heat

and the silence of that

unborn life

making itself

known at my desk,

my hands

still

dark with the

crumbling soil

as I write 

and watch 

the first lines

of a new poem,

like flowers

of scarlet fire,

coming to fullness

in a new light.