Even though the holiday season has come and gone, I’d like to share with you a practice of mine. Instead of sending a store-bought card, I scour through my library of inspirational books to find a poem or verse that seems to encapsulate a deeper learning or awareness that “landed” for me in the past year. Then I send it off to like-minded friends, family and clients.
I’d like to share with you the verse I picked. It speaks so clearly, so eloquently of how coaching can touch your life by giving “your heart back to itself.”
The verse is by Derek Walcott. Below it, is the sequel. This one I wrote. I hope Derek doesn’t mind.
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,
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.
The Sequel
Are you ready?
To make love to the stranger who was your self?
Are you ready?
To make her yours now?
Never again the abandoned one
when he arrives.
Or back-burnered
when her vocal cords
out-distance yours.
Always there
the porcelin egg
telling the truth.
Make the promise.
Make it.
Yes.
yes.
yes
Now feast.
– Carolyn
