Lonesome Guardian

Make me a guardian of your vastness, make me a listener at the stone. Give me eyes to spread on your seas loneliness; let me accompany the rivers from the clamor on both sides far into the sound of the night. Send me to your empty lands, through which the wide winds go, where great monasteries stand like robes around unlived lives. There I will keep myself to pilgrims, from their voices and their shapes by no more deception separated. And behind a blind old man of the way, which no one knows. Rainer Maria Rilke's lyrical words express a deep yearning to be close to nature, to understand its mysteries, and to protect its beauty. This guardian of vastness would stand as a sentinel against the forces that would destroy or pollute it. Rilke's poem speaks to our own need to find ways of connecting with the natural world, even amid urban noise and bustle. It reminds us that we, too, can be guardians of the earth's wonders.