Rilke and Parker Palmer on Autumn

This is a fabulous poem of Autumn by Rainer Maria Rilke from Parker Palmer's facebook page, where he adds his own reflection: 


 "In the American midwest where I live, it's autumn—a season of great beauty and deep melancholy, at least for me...

At moments—as I walk down my street, through a nearby park, or in the more distant woods—I am stopped in my tracks by endless arrays of color and form, light and shadow, that no artist could fully capture. 

At other moments—as I see the leaves drop and the dark skeletons of the trees emerge—I am laid low by the brevity of life and the way all green, growing, and glorious things sooner or later pass away.

But the older I get, the more I find that these two feelings complement rather than compete with each other.

The fact that all things die makes me even more grateful for the beauty we can find in nature and human nature. 

And if, in that gratitude, we are willing to cultivate the earth AND the human community, what falls to the ground around us and among us can help create the conditions that allow the beauty of new life to arise.

I love the way Rilke puts it in this poem: "...there is Someone, whose hands, infinitely calm, hold up all this falling." What can I say but praise be and amen..."

( Apologies for the fuzziness of the text on the poem below; my attempts to resize and enlarge the image can't get it to a size that is bigger than this without the image enveloping the whole screen !  Please let me know if you can't read it and I'll write the poem separately underneath as text only.)  

                                                                             Image source