START CLOSE IN
Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take.
Start with the ground you know, the pale ground beneath your feet, your own way to begin the conversation.
Start with your own question, give up on other people’s questions, don’t let them smother something simple.
To hear another’s voice, follow your own voice, wait until that voice
becomes an intimate private ear that can really listen to another.
Start right now take a small step you can call your own don’t follow someone else’s heroics, be humble and focused, start close in, don’t mistake that other for your own.
Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take.
START CLOSE IN River Flow New & Selected Poems Many Rivers Press © David Whyte
Photo © David Whyte July 2011 The Descent to Troutbeck. Cumbria
