Whoever's Calm and Sensible
There is a light seed grain inside.You fill it with yourself, or it dies.I'm caught in this curling energy. Your hair.Whoever's calm and sensible is insane.
View ArticleThe Seed Market
Can you find another market like this?Where, with your one roseyou can buy hundreds of rose gardens?Where, for one seed you get a whole wilderness?For one weak breath, the divine wind?You have been...
View ArticleThe Worm's Waking
This is how a human being can change.There is a wormaddicted to eating grape leaves.Suddenly, he wakes up,call it grace, whatever, somethingwakes him, and he is no longer a worm.He is the entire...
View ArticleTalking through the Door (1)
Patio de los Arrayanes, The AlhambraGranada, SpainPhoto from Wiki CommonsYou said, Who's at the door?I said, Your slave.You said, What do you want?To see you and bow.We talked through the door. I...
View ArticleTalking through the Door (2)
Sala de los Secretos, The Alhambra Palace(Whispering Chamber) Granada, SpainPhoto from Wiki CommonsThen you asked, Where have you been most comfortable?In the palace.What did you see there?Amazing...
View ArticleImagining Is Like
Imagining is like feeling aroundin a dark lane, or washingyour eyes with blood.You are the truthfrom foot to brow. Now,what else would you like to know?
View ArticleDark Sweetness
The ground turns green. A drum begins.Commentaries on the heart arrive in seven volumes.The pen puts its head downto give a dark sweetness to the page.Planets go wherever they want.Venus sways near the...
View ArticleThe Grasses
The same wind that uproots treesmakes the grasses shine.The lordly wind loves the weaknessand the lowness of grasses.The axe doesn't worry how thick the branches are.It cuts them to pieces. But not the...
View ArticleWhen I Am with You
The Moonrise, Mamaroneck, by Edward J. SteichenWhen I am with you, we stay up all night.When you are not here, I can't go to sleep.Praise God for these two insomnias.And the difference between them.
View ArticleRed Shirt
Portrait of the Boy EutychesEgyptian, A.D. 100-150Has anyone seen the boy who used to come here?Round-faced troublemaker, quick to find a joke, slowto be serious. Red shirt,perfect coordination,...
View ArticleMy Worst Habit
My worst habit is I get so tired of winterI become a torture to those I'm with.If you are not here, nothing grows.I lack clarity. My wordstangle and knot up.How to cure bad water? Send it back to the...
View ArticleRed
Red with shyness, the redthat became all the rosegarden reds.The red distance,red of the stove boiling water,red of the mountain turning bloodred,a mountain holding rubies secretly inside.Do I love...
View ArticleBody Intelligence (1)
Three Capetian French scholarsconsulting an astrolabe, ca. AD 1200Your intelligence is always with you,overseeing your body, even thoughyou may not be aware of its work.If you start doing...
View ArticleBody Intelligence (2)
Elephant and Rider, Indian, circa 1640Metropolitan Museum of ArtThere are guideswho can show you the way.Use them.But they will not satisfy your longing.Keep wanting the connection with presencewith...
View ArticleI Have Five Things to Say
I have five things to say,five fingers to give into your grace.First, when I was apart from you,this world did not exist, nor any other.Second, whatever I was looking for was always you.Third, why did...
View ArticleThere is Some Kiss We Want
There is some kiss we wantwith our whole lives,the touch of spirit on the body.Seawater begs the pearlto break its shell.And the lily, how passionatelyit needs some wild darling.At night, I open the...
View ArticleThe Tent
Outside, the freezing desert night.This other night inside grows warm, kindling.Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust.We have a soft garden in here.The continents blasted,cities and little...
View ArticleThis World Which is Made of Our Love for Emptiness
Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence.Existence: this place made from our lovefor that emptiness!Yet somehow comes emptiness,this existence goes.Praise to that happening over and over.For...
View ArticleStrange Frenzy
There is a strange frenzy in my head,of birds flying,each particle circulating on its own.Is the one I love everywhere?
View ArticleThe Milk of Millenia
I am part of the loadnot rightly balanced.I drop off in the grasslike the old cave-sleepers, to browsewherever I fall.For hundreds of thousands of years I have been dustgrainsfloating and flying in the...
View ArticleA Tender Agony of Parting
A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,cut holes in it, and called it a human being.Since then, it has been wailinga tender agony of parting,never mentioning the skillthat gave it life as a flute.
View ArticleThe Lame Goat
Goat sculpture from found objects, by PicassoYou have seen a herd of goatsgoing down to the water.The lame and dreamy goatbrings up the rear.There are worried faces about that one,but now they're...
View ArticleThe You Pronoun
Someone asked once, What is love?Be lost in me, I said. You will know love when that happens.Love has no calculating in it. That is why it is said to be a quality of God and not of human beings.God...
View ArticleBuoyancy
I saw you and became empty.This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,existence thrives and creates more existence.To praise is to praisehow one...
View ArticleA Full Year of Rumi Readings
Was there a beginning to this journey? Is there an end?I began to post daily readings here from the book A Year with Rumi on March 11, 2010. Odd, I know, to start in the third month of the year, but...
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