Sally Mann

TO BE COURAGEOUS

See with every turning day,
how each season wants to make
a child of you again, wants you to become
a seeker after rainfall and birdsong,
watch how it weathers you to a testing
in the tried and true, tells you
with each falling leaf, to leave and slip away,
even from the branch that held you,
to go when you need to,
to be courageous,
to be like that last word
you’d want to say
before you leave the world.

Excerpt from ‘Coleman’s Bed’ in ‘River Flow: 
New and Selected Poems’
©David Whyte and Many Rivers Press