many shapes

You come and go. The doors swing closed 

ever more gently, almost without a shudder. 

Of all those 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. 

Often when I imagine you 

your wholeness cascades into many shapes. 

You run like a herd of luminous deer 

and I am dark, I am forest. 

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

from Love Poems to God, 

The Book of Monastic Life