From Rilke's Onto A Vast Plain

Prairie Oak by Jenny Lee

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real . . .


excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Onto a Vast Plain", translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy