What gravity has to show us

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