Attentiveness

You come and go.

The doors swing closed

ever more gently, almost

without a shudder.

Of all who move through the

quiet houses,

you are the quietest.

We become so accustomed to you,

we no longer look up

when your shadow falls over

the book we are reading

and makes it glow. For all

things

sing you: at times

we just hear them more

clearly.

You are a wheel at which I stand,

whose dark spokes sometimes

catch me up,

revolve me nearer to the

center.

Then all the work I put my

hand to

widens from turn to turn.

Rainer Maria Rilke (Book of Hours: Love Poems to God)