1139. The Song Of The Lark - David Whyte

The song begins and the eyes are lifted

but the sickle points toward the ground,

its downward curve forgotten in the song she hears,

while over the dark wood, rising or falling,

the sun lifts on cool air,

the small body of a singing lark.  

The song falls, the eyes raise, the mouth opens

and her bare feet on the earth have stopped.

Whoever listens in this silence, as she listens,

will also stand opened, thoughtless, frightened

by the joy she feels, the pathway in the field

branching to a hundred more, no one has explored.

What is called in her rises from the ground

and is found in her body,

what she is given is secret even from her.

This silence is the seed in her

of everything she is

and falling through her body

to the ground from which she comes,

it finds a hidden place to grow

and rises, and flowers, in old wild places,

where the dark-edged sickle cannot go.