Finisterre: at the edge of a new school year

David Whyte has a poem entitled "Finisterre" which has been a companion to me over the past year.  I have known for a while that it had some part to play in my life.  I am now working on a writing project, and I feel this poem still has much to offer.

Today I decided it was a prime time to use this poem for a mentor text, and write my own version.  I can see that this could be a practice I continue every time I come to the edge of something new, as I am now.

Whyte's poem is about coming to the final steps of the El Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, which ends at Finisterre, a place that was thought to be the edge of the world. This is where the pilgrims shed their shoes, burn things they no longer need, and basically release themselves from everything that has weighted them down. It feels like a wonderful metaphor for my summer journey.  Here is my version of "Finisterre" for this moment in time.

Finisterre  -- the edge of the new school year

The road in the end taking the path the summer took you

into a new school year, old ones long past now and forgotten.

You made a commitment to uncover your creative blocks,

especially with music. No way to the future now except through

the stream of gratefulness, all that has been recovered.

You set out to make sense of it all, your need to purge and release,

your determination to give up the struggle. In the beginning it felt

like this world might not let you pass; you had to prove yourself

again and again, digging deep into reserves and growing stronger,

finding all the practices that worked in the past, bringing them

together into a whole that nourishes, that makes you fully you. And

then the river opened to the sea and you knew it was for real.

You had already unloaded your baggage before even knowing this

was the summer you would re-open the channels long closed and

inaccessible. And now at the edge of a new chance, the beauty of

being a teacher, a new beginning awaits. You are certain the old shoes

no longer fit. You will mindfully leave them behind and walk into

the unknown, the place to which you evolved and is eternally inside

of you, to be true to the vision of abundance, compassion,

beginner’s mind, and gratitude created by the honey sweetness of

the artistic opening and the brightness of the July sun.