It Happens To Those Who Live Alone

It happens to those
who live alone
that they feel sure
of visitors
when no one else
is there,

until the one day
and one particular
hour
working in the
quiet garden,

when they realize
at once, that all along
they have been
an invitation
to everything
and every kind of trouble

and that life
happens by
to those who inhabit
silence

like the bees
visiting
the tall mallow
on their legs of gold,
or the wasps
going from door to door
in the tall forest
of the daisies.

I have my freedom
today
because
nothing really happened

and nobody came
to see me.
Only the slow
growing of the garden
in the summer heat

and the silence of that
unborn life
making itself
known at my desk,

my hands
still
dark with the
crumbling soil
as I write
and watch

the first lines
of a new poem,
like flowers
of scarlet fire,
coming to fullness
in a new light.

-- David Whyte