We could not have counted on it, <br />those days when we were children young in years <br />but rich with a thousand hopes <br />jostling, pushed aside, forgotten in a day, <br />turned over in the mind in those few savoured moments <br />before a happy-tired sleep <br /> <br />nor did we think even to hope for it <br />or think how it would be to squeeze the honey of it <br />between our palms into our ready mouths <br />leaving the wax upon our hands and laughing <br />together or alone, in rainbow solitude <br /> <br />but now it’s here, we can savour the honey of it, <br />the future which we could not have had before <br />the days and years had closed like inexorable cupped petals, <br />into a summer evening’s sun-hazed past – <br /> <br />we could not have hoped or counted on nor dreamed - <br />these days when, all required work now done, <br />life’s evening hours and the late and lazy <br />golden leisure of fruit-filled autumn branches <br />stretches out in even though not endless measure – <br /> <br />today I choose to go to school to Rilke, <br />a choice as free as we think the birds are free, <br />the animals, the trees – yet know so little, <br />so very little, of their life – <br /> <br />and pick up the book of his poems at blissful random, <br />and read one single line – <br /> <br />‘I have great faith in all things not yet spoken’ – <br /> <br />and sit here, as the world falls, gently, as somewhere far away, <br />the book silent between my hands, having spoken, <br />like a honeycomb holding the honey <br />of some new, untrodden, unbelievably rich life.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/0034-going-to-school-to-rilke/
