Well, today has officially become poetry day for me. Talking Stick is a fellow blogger I enjoy. I just read his post about a book of poems by Rilke. The following is a quote that lunged at me: ...wishes are merely memories that come to us from the future.

I became so intrigued I consulted immediately with Professor Google. My time is crunched this morning, but here's a bit of what I learned about Rilke:
Rene Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (1875-1926), better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian-Austrian poet. He's considered one of the most significant poets in the German language. His haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety: themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets. He wrote in both verse and a highly lyrical prose. Among English-language readers, his best-known work is the Duino Elegies.

The Duino Elegies are intensely religious, mystical poems that weigh beauty and existential suffering. The poems employ a rich symbolism of angels and salvation but not in keeping with typical Christian interpretations. Rilke begins the first elegy in an invocation of philosophical despair, asking: "Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the hierarchies of angels?"

Thanks, Talking Stick, for contributing to my inspirational morning.