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)