I first encountered David Whyte when a mentor recommended his 1994 book, ‘The Heart Aroused:Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America’.  For the ‘Friday Poem’ this week, I was looking for one that reflected a bit of the ‘magic’ of teamwork. My search brought me back to the poet and author. ‘Working Together’ was composed by David Whyte for Boeing to mark the introduction of the 777 jetliner.

Writing in the preface to the revised edition of ‘The Heart Aroused’ the poet cited his challenge:

“The impossible task was to bring together the supposedly strategic world of business with the great inheritance of the human literary imagination, particularly through the difficult art, poetry, and particularly through the fierce, unremitting wish for the dangerous truth that is poetry’s special gift.”

On the occasion of the ‘fly by’ of the dwarf planet Pluto and in celebration of creativity, engagement and courage in the workplace, enjoy ‘Working Together’.

Working Together

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

passed at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self,
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

— David Whyte
from The House of Belonging
©1996 Many Rivers Press