Sometimes: Poet and Philosopher David Whyte’s Stunning Meditation on Walking into the Questions of Our Becoming

It seems that to find the real path we have to go off the path we are now on, even for an instant, and earn the privilege of losing our way.

When you live in the silence and solitude of the land, cities seem startling.

I am reminded of the Czesław Miłosz poem “Encounter,” which recalls a simple moment, far back in time, when a companion pointed out a hare that ran out in front of his wagon as he rode through the countryside at dawn. “Oh my love,” he writes, “where are they, where are they going / The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles? / I ask

“That’s not it,” he says. I have come to learn that losing the track is not the end of the trail, but rather a space of preparation. The whole process is contained here as a pure potentiality. Prepare yourself to hear the call, invite the unknown, look for the first track, tune in to the instrument of the body, and learn to see the track amidst man