Some months ago, while passing the window of a shop, my eye was caught by a swan – its arched head gracing the surface of a mug, with flowers and leaves winding up it’s neck to hover in a crown over its head. I stopped, transfixed, feeling the energy and desire well in me to have the mug – to own it and enjoy that image as I sipped my coffee. “No”, I rationalized, “I do not need another mug and the money could be better used for necessities.” A few weeks later, I again passed the store front and seeing the mug, I once more felt the desire to have it, but carried on.

And then yesterday, while reading Rilke’s swan poem, the image of the swan on the mug floated right to me and as I read how the swan on the water “is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown, more like a king” I saw the crown of foliage and knew the cup had found me as a symbol of what was yet to come – this course, Rilke’s poem and that in buying it and drinking deeply from its depths, I would remind myself daily to be a swan on the water, to choose to float in the elements that support my gifts to ripple outward wholeheartedly.