How surely gravity’s law
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world
Each thing -
each stone, blossom, child -
is held in place.
Only we in our arrogance
push out beyond what each of us belong to -
for some empty freedom
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in god’s heart:
they have never left him.
This is what things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust in our heaviness,
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly
Rilke, translated by Barrows and Macy
