I awoke this morning in the gold light

turning this way and that.

thinking for a moment it was one

day like any other.

But the veil had gone from my

darkened heart and I thought

it must have been the quiet

candlelight that filled my room,

it must have been the first

easy rhythm with which I breathed

myself to sleep,

it must have been the prayer I said

speaking to the otherness of the night.

And I thought this is the good day

you could meet your love,

this is the black day someone close

to you could die.

This is the day you realize

how easily the thread is broken

between this world and the next

and I found myself sitting up

in the quiet pathway of light,

the tawny close grained cedar

burning round me like fire

and all the angels of this housely

heaven ascending through the first

roof of light the sun has made.

This is the bright home in which I live,

this is where I ask my friends to come,

this is where I want to love all the things

it has taken me so long to learn to love.

This is the temple of my adult aloneness

and I belong to that aloneness

as I belong to my life.

There is no house

like the house of belonging.

David Whyte