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Love After Love

February 23, 2005

ph_feb_bestLife.jpg

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,

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
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

This lovely poem was posted last week as a comment to the entry Just What I Needed. To say I was moved by this random act of kindness would be an understatement. I read it through again and thought to myself, "Wow, now THAT is just what I needed to read.

Soon after, I puttered into the kitchen to make myself some tea, and pulled an old Oprah Magazine off the bookshelf. I've been doing this over the past couple of weeks... thumbing through my old magazines and tearing out the articles I'd like to read, filing them, and tossing what I don't need out. With my steaming cup of Egyptian mint tea in one hand and Oprah in the other, I cozied into the chaise lounge deciding this was the perfect time to start feasting on my life.

I flipped open the magazine and, I kid you not, I found the VERY SAME poem staring up at me from the "Live Your Best Life" section. My eyes widened and I'm pretty sure my heart skipped a beat as I carefully read through the poem for the third time. Please, do me a favor, and read it through again too. It's a gift to anyone who finds it.

Evidently, the universe is conspiring in my favor, because I didn't find this poem... it somehow found me!

"Give your heart back to yourself."

Ahhhh, just what I needed. Thank you so much, John.

Posted by vincent at February 23, 2005 01:52 PM

Comments

I think when you are the sort of person to design a blog like this, careful and contemplative, but thoroughly modern and very woman, and if you are the sort of person to putter into a kitchen to make tea...

If you are that sort of a person, poems find you. They just do.

God love you.

Posted by: real live preacher at February 24, 2005 09:31 PM

I totally agree with real live preacher. I have forwarded the poem to my daughter Rachael. Poems find her, too.

Love from Nola

Posted by: Nola Figen Perla at March 3, 2005 10:14 PM

I just want to say i love that poem, and you blog is everything i wish mine could be and more, though i would seriously stuff it up , due to my computer illiteracy, depsite grwoing up in the Genertaion Me.

that poem was lovely, and oddly enough it was the first page i viewed.

thankyou for the beauty in your blog

Chanel

Posted by: clearlyathand at March 21, 2005 06:53 PM