Last year, I admired wines. This,
I’m wandering inside the red world.

Last year, I gazed at the fire.
This year I’m burnt kabob.

Thirst drove me down to the water
where I drank the moon’s reflection.

Now I am a lion staring up totally
lost in love with the thing itself.

Don’t ask questions about longing.
Look in my face.

Soul drunk, body ruined, these two
sit helpless in a wrecked wagon.
Neither knows how to fix it.

And my heart, I’d say it was more
like a donkey sunk in a mudhole,
struggling and miring deeper.

But listen to me: for one moment,
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you. God.


SPRING IS CHRIST

Everyone has eaten and fallen asleep. The house is empty.
We walk out to the garden to let the apple meet the peach,
to carry messages between rose and jasmine.

Spring is Christ,
raising martyred plants from their shrouds.
Their mouths open in gratitude, wanting to be kissed.
The glow of the rose and the tulip means a lamp
is inside. A leaf trembles. I tremble
in the wind-beauty like silk from Turkestan.
The censer fans into flame.

This wind is the Holy Spirit.
The trees are Mary.
Watch how husband and wife play subtle games with their hands.
Cloudy pearls from Aden are thrown across the lovers,
as is the marriage custom.

The scent of Joseph’s shirt comes to Jacob
A red carnelian of Yemeni laughter is heard
By Muhammed in Mecca.

We talk about this and that. There’s no rest
except on these branching moments.


SPRING

Again, the violet bows to the lily.
Again, the rose is tearing off her gown!

The green ones have come from the other world,
tipsy like the breeze up to some new foolishness.

Again, near the top of the mountain
the anemone’s sweet features appear.

The hyacinth speaks formally to the jasmine,
“Peace be with you.” “And peace to you, lad!
Come walk with me in this meadow.”

Again, there are sufis everywhere!

The bud is shy, but the wind removes
her veil suddenly, “My friend!”

The Friend is here like water in the stream, like a lotus on the water.

The narcissus winks at the wisteria, “Whenever you say.”

And the clove to the willow, “You are the one
I hope for.” The willow replies, “Consider
these chambers of mine yours. Welcome!”

The apple, “Orange, why the frown!”
“So that those who mean harm
will not see my beauty.”

The ringdove comes asking, “Where,
where is the Friend?”

With one note the nightingale
indicates the rose.

Again, the season of Spring has come
and a spring-source rises under everything,
a moon sliding from the shadows.

Many things must be left unsaid, because it’s late,
but whatever conversation we haven’t had
tonight, we’ll have tomorrow.


ONLY BREATH

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

There is a way between voice and presence
Where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.


ELEPHANT IN THE DARK

Some Hindus have an elephant to show.
No one here has ever seen an elephant.
They bring it at night to a dark room.

One by one, we go in the dark and come out
saying how we experience the animal.

One of us happens to touch the trunk,
“A water-pipe kind of creature.”

Another, the ear, “A very strong, always moving
back and forth, fan-animal.”

Another, the leg, “I find it still,
like a column on a temple.”

Another touches the curved back.
“A leathery throne.”

Another, the cleverer, feels the tusk.
“A rounded sword made of porcelain.”
He’s proud of his description.

Each of us touches one place
and understands the whole in that way.

The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark are
how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.

If each of us held a candle there,
and if we went in together,
we could see it.


“Persians and Afghanis call Rumi ‘Jelaluddin Balkhi.’ He was born September 30, 1207, in Balkh, Afghanistan, which was then part of the Persian empire. The name Rumi means ‘from Roman Anatolia.’ He was not known by that name, of course, until after his family, fleeing the threat of the invading Mongol armies, emigrated to Konya, Turkey, sometime between 1215 and 1220. His father, Bahauddin Walad, was a theologian and jurist and a mystic of uncertain lineage.”

“…until the age of thirty-seven [Rumi] was a brilliant scholar and popular teacher. But his life changed forever when he met the powerful wandering dervish, Shams of Tabriz, of whom Rumi said, ‘What I had thought of before as God, I met today in a human being.’ From this mysterious and esoteric friendship came a new height of spiritual enlightenment….”

“On the night of December 5, 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door. He went out, never to be seen again. Most likely, he was murdered with the connivance of Rumi’s son, Allaedin; if so Shams indeed gave his head for the privilege of mystical Friendship.”

“When Shams disappeared, Rumi began his transformation into a mystical artist. ‘He turned into a poet, began to listen to music, and sang, whirling around, hour after hour.’”

“The mystery of the Friend’s absence covered Rumi’s world. He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus. It was there that he realized,

Why should I seek? I am the same as He, His essence speaks through me. I have been looking for myself!

The union became complete. There was full fana, annihilation in the Friend. Shams was writing the poems. Rumi called the huge collection of his odes (ghazals) and quatrains (rubaiyat) The Works of Shams of Tabriz.”

“He died on December 17, 1273.”

The Essential Rumi. Translated by Coleman Barks, with John Moyne, A.J. Arberry, and Reynold Nicholson. Castle Books, 1995, 1997.