When the Wind Flows

and the leaves fall and your own death comes to greet you

Photo: © David Whyte

When the Wind Flows

When the wind flows
and the leaves fall
and your own death
comes to greet you
with its slack mouth

you’ll have to ask
forgiveness then
to gain an easy conscience
for the road ahead,
otherwise,
no one will want you
where he comes from.

No, it’s not that they’re choosy,
it’s just that you wouldn’t be happy
without his earnest advice
on the learned and
slightly desperate disciplines
of letting go,
no, you wouldn’t
get anywhere near the place
without realising
what you’d been missing all along.

He knows you well enough,
he knows you want
the burden to be yours
and yours alone,
and he knows you’d prefer
a hundred hells than a heaven
where you can’t cover with a smile
what until now you’ve hidden
and never spoken in the clear air.

That’s why you’ll be terrified
when he first arrives and hell
you realize, resembles more
an average life,
half hidden,
never fully spoken,
something you can grow used to.


-from Everything is Waiting for You available on davidwhyte.com

In writing ‘When the Wind Flows’ I remember wanting to scare myself (and the reader) a little, regarding a life only half lived, half felt and only half grieved: written from the end perspective of our future deathbed. I wanted to scare myself because I wanted to accelerate the inevitable breakdown that occurs at the end, and bring it into my present life; I wanted to bring together the inner and outer worlds that we often meld only in those last hours and that often, in our everyday life, we use every last ounce of our energy, to keep apart. DW

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