may what i do

I caught this pink ski bunny carving her own path among the downhill racers we were watching.  On her pink helmet was a tuft of pink netting, the kind you’d find holding up a ballerina’s tutu!  She was a fearless little warrior in pink tulle.

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me.
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

3 thoughts on “may what i do

  1. This work of freeing “what waits within me” rarely seems childlike, these days. More commonly, it feels ancient and arduous, and much in need of a backhoe to cut through the layers of igneous stone.

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