River Flow Quotes

“one small thing
I've learned these years,

how to be alone,
and at the edge of aloneness
how to be found by the world.”
― David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007

“It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned,
if you can know despair or see it in others,
I want to know

if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes,
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living, 
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.”
― David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007

“In the silence that follows
a great line
you can feel Lazarus
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light.”
― David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007

“One day I will
say
the gift I once had
has been taken,
the place I have
made for myself
belongs to another,
and the words I have sung
are being sung by the ones
I would want.

Then I will be ready
for that voice
and the still silence
in which it arrives.

And if my faith is good
then we’ll meet again
on the road
and we’ll be thirsty,
and stop
and laugh
and drink together again
from the deep well
of things as they are.

...”
― David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007

“THE OPENING OF EYES After R. S. Thomas That day I saw beneath dark clouds, the passing light over the water and I heard the voice of the world speak out, I knew then, as I had before, life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read. It is the opening of eyes long closed. It is the vision of far off things seen for the silence they hold. It is the heart after years of secret conversing, speaking out loud in the clear air. It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees before the lit bush. It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground.”
― David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems

“Walking the roads is enough today, I’ll follow the dark line of receding sun”
― David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems

“MAMEEN

Be infinitessimal under that sky, a creature
even the sailing hawk misses, a wraith
among the rocks where the mist parts slowly.
Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed
by circumstance, how great reputations
dissolve with infirmity and how you,
in particular, live a hairsbreadth from losing
everyone you hold dear.

Then, look back down the path as if seeing
your past and then south over the hazy blue
coast as if present to a wide future.
Remember the way you are all possibilities
you can see and how you live best
as an appreciator of horizons,
whether you reach them or not.
Admit that once you have got up
from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary, you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim,
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain,
who helped to make it.”
― David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007

“Inside everyone is a great shout of joy waiting to be born.”
― David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems

“Seeing from a high window the three years old boy caught by sunlight, peeing in the garden, I am suddenly aware why those small statues abound gracing our squares and piazzas! The form is eternal delight, and the source of that long golden arch of urine a blessing of curved tummy and bended knees. Hands clapped on bottom, eyes concentrated somewhere between source and target, amazed, enraptured, and miracle again, the golden line between subject and object made clear, whose author, transcending duality, looks out at a world intimately experiencing his arrival.”
― David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems Revised Edition

“What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.”
― David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems

“HORSES MOVING ON THE SNOW In winter through the damp grass around the house there are horses moving on the snow in the half-light they move quickly following the fence until the mist takes them completely and evening is the hollow sound of hooves in the south field.”
― David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems

“THE SEVEN STREAMS

Come down drenched, at the end of May,
with the cold rain so far into your bones
that nothing will warm you
except your own walking
and let the sun come out at the day's end
by Slievenaglasha with the rainbows doubling
over Mulloch Mor and see your clothes
steaming in the bright air. Be a provenance
of something gathered, a summation of
previous intuitions, let your vulnerabilities
walking on the cracked sliding limestone
be this time, not a weakness, but a faculty
for understanding what's about
to happen. Stand above the Seven Streams
letting the deep down current surface
around you, then branch and branch
as they do, back into the mountain
and as if you were able for that flow,
say the few necessary words
and walk on, broader and cleansed
for having imagined.”
― David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007