THE EDGE YOU CARRY WITH YOU What is this beguiling reluctance to be happy? This quickness in turning away the moment you might arrive? The felt sense, that a moment's unguarded joy might after all, just kill you? You know so very well the edge of darkness you have always carried with you. You know so very well, your childhood legacy: that particular, inherited sense of hurt, given to you so freely by the world you entered. And you know too well by now the body's hesitation at the invitation to undo everything others seemed to want to make you learn. But your edge of darkness has always made its own definition secretly as an edge of light and the door you closed might, by its very nature be one just waiting to be leant against and opened. And happiness might just be a single step away, on the other side of that next unhelpful and undeserving thought. Your way home, understood now, not as an achievement, but as a giving up, a blessed undoing, an arrival in the body and a full rest in the give and take of the breath. This living breathing body always waiting to greet you at the door, always no matter the long years you've been away, still wanting you to come home. --from Still Possible
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I read literature at University and was fed the English Classics of course, but these days, after many decades of living I really only want to read poems that speak to the contemporary human condition or give me a deeper understanding of myself. This is one such poem from David. I love the way he asks if allowing ourselves a moment's joy would actually kill us!! And I have seen in operation that moment when a breakthrough is made and as the stiff-hinged door begins to finally open, the person panics and slams it shut again. But verses 5 and 6 are most significant for me : the legacy of childhood; the the body's hesitation to undo everything others seemed to want to make us learn. But I have overcome the hesitation and undone everything possible over the past three decades. Therein lies freedom and the unimaginable joy of coming home. What a friend calls reading from your own book. David got it so right in this poem.
Goodness David,
Either you or I or maybe both must be in some form of cahoots the Mystery in order to deliver this just when most needed! Thank you.