Today’s Rilke passage is titled Praise. He tells us to disappear in praising. The last line again inspired my small stone: “Nothing belongs to us.”

This made me recall my emergency ileostomy five years ago, when I was extremely ill with C. Difficile that came very close to killing me, and that too, is reflected in my piece today.

Surgical Scalpel (Photo credit: tudedude)

Jan. 10, 2014
…Nothing belongs to us.   – Rainer Maria Rilke  

 
Words to craft poems
don’t belong to me. They’re
the same words of poets past,
of poets yet to come.

I share my words with others.
Only their order on the page
makes them, for a moment, mine.

Even the time I live on
borrowed, gift of a surgical knife.

–CAS

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For Jan. 9, the entry in A Year with Rilke is called Overflow, and the image is of the overflow from a fountain, how fullness flows into us “when things and thoughts cannot contain it.”

For me, the resonance is in the last line. How thoughts tend to take over, sometimes overwhelmingly. So that is what inspires today’s small stone.

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Jan. 9, 2014

Seeking a way
to contain my own thoughts
so I am not overwhelmed

to be instead mindful
less full of worry
to do things differently

to take each small step.

–CAS

For January 8th, A Year with Rilke selection is titled Balance. That “we” are not in balance with the tree of life, nor with the seasons.

I thought of my own experience with balance. How I lose focus on other things I need to do when I am on the computer for hours, even what this lack of physical movement does to my body’s balance. Here is my small stone for January 8. All my small stones are first drafts and first impressions:

Balance (Photo credit: Summations)

Jan. 8, 2014

Why am I out of step
with my own life?

I run to catch up,
then slow to the speed
of moving backward.

If I am hot,
I long for cool, then
shiver in the wind.

On one foot,
I wobble, untethered

–CAS

Rainer Maria Rilke (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today A Year with Rilke’s entry is called The Vastness of Connection. Rilke questions what his part  might be in the connection to the stars.  (At least, that is my interpretation of his writing today.)

This fits with some of my own questions right now, and so my small stone ponders connection too.

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Jan. 7, 2014

projection (Photo credit: tom_focus)

To stand outside myself
a moment to consider
the vastness of the universe
how small my presence in it

how am I connected
to the world around me

how am I connected
to the stars?

–CAS

Rainer Maria Rilke (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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