A poem for your thoughts
It’s funny, I never figured I’d be one of those people that get’s behind on blogging. After all, not much is going on in my life. I don’t have kids to give updates about and share their cute stories, I don’t have a husband to brag about his accomplishments or sweet actions, I don’t even have a consistent hobby to take pictures of and show my improvement. And still, I have somehow managed to get behind in my blogging. You know what that means.
Life is pretty good.
In honor of life being pretty good – let’s pretend I didn’t just remember the nearly 3 feet of snow outside making driving a major hassle – I’m going to share a poem with you, by Derek Walcott. Back in my days of graduate studies, I had a professor who had wisely chosen to focus his area of humanities research in the Caribbean. Brilliant! Who wouldn’t love traveling there for research? One of the people he worked with closely was a Caribbean poet, Derek Walcott. Professor Handley talked about his poems a lot, yet I never really read any of them back then. For some reason, though, I felt inspired to check him out this week. The following poem was one of the top search results, and what a great poem it is! I feel like it captures a lot of what I have been feeling lately in my journey to self-recovery and self-discovery.
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott
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