A lyrical, wisdom-seeking journey. David Koenig's poems explore the struggle and forgiveness involved in healing one's own heart, and how the love of a single individual with sufficient lightness of heart and depth of love can propel one toward wholeness and clarity.
Ruth Rootberg, Lecturer
Yale University:
"David Koenig is a prophet of the heart...He ultimately offers his prophetic promise that the heart can be restored to its natural grace and that life will feel more whole again... the spiral conjures the journey—one that twists—and the underworld of the unconscious one descends to and rises from in order to live heartfully in the world."
Christine Summers, Lecturer
Elmhurst College:
"...reminds us again, what elation it can bring, to feel one's self alive and connected to the world, when one allows one's heart to heal and renew itself. I felt reminded of Hesse's "Steps" and Goethe's "Dying and Becoming."
Cleansing
Though the roots
Of my heart
Are deeply soiled
By now,
And gnarled
Beyond recoil,
I stand
At the sea
On a windswept day
And breast
The wind
With my heart's dark cave...
And the waves
Roar in with their din
In my ears
Around the roots
In the dark
With their pain and tears,
And fill the cave
With the clean deep sea-
Until the roots of my heart
Are but mysterious memory-
Which I ride with the wind,
With the gulls on the deep.
The Most Important Thing
The most important thing
You can ever do,
Is to find out who
You are,
In the presence of someone
Who loves you.
In that moment,
Your fears
Of being less than a part
Of the world
Will reverse,
And your dream of being
A real part of the world
Will come true,
You will belong everywhere
Because you belong somewhere,
And you will believe in yourself
Because you understand yourself,
And because someone
Who understands you loves you,
And believes in you. . .