Stone

by David Whyte

The face in the stone is a mirror looking into you.

You have gazed at the moving waters

you have seen the slow light, in the sky

above Lough Inagh, beneath you, streams have flowed,

and rivers of earth have moved beneath your feet,

but you have never looked into the immovability

of stone like this, the way it holds you, gives you

not a way forward but a doorway in, staunches

your need to leave, becomes faithful by going nowhere

something that wants you to stay here and look back,

be weathered by what comes to you, like the way you too

have travelled from so far away to be here, once reluctant

and now as solid and as here and as willing

to be touched as everything you have found.

You can find this poem in the collection The Bell and The Blackbird by David Whyte.