Listening To You While Driving Home

en.wikipedia.org

Driving up-Island, I slid the cd

into the player. The music swirled,

and then the spoken words:

"The minute I heard my first love story,

I started looking for you,

not knowing how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.

They're in each other all along."

Enchantment. Enlightenment. 

Electricity. Recognition.

Somewhere within, through all the years 

of searching, I had known this

without knowing.

Gazing at the clouds

wisping across the mountains

like Sufi dancers,

I was smiling.

"Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways

to kneel and kiss the ground."

Your words a blessing in my ears,

the effervescence of your love

a benediction

in my heart.

Posted for Kim's prompt at Verse First: Writers are Lovers: to write a tribute to a poet we adore. I chose Rumi.

A Word from Rumi

Seek the wisdom

that will untie your knot.

Seek the path

that demands your

whole being.

-Rumi

A Poem from Rumi

Who Says Words With My Mouth?





All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and
what am I supposed to be doing?


I have no idea.


My soul is from elsewhere,
I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.


This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent,
sitting in this aviary.


The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear
who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?


Who looks out with my eyes?
What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.


If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord,
and I can't leave that way.


Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.


This poetry, I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

-Rumi

A Word from Rumi

[image from houstonnuevavida.org]

Undressing

Learn the alchemy true human beings know.

The moment you accept what troubles

you've been given, the door will open.

Welcome difficulty, as a familiar comrade.

Joke with torment brought by the Friend.

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes

and jackets that serve to cover

and then are taken off.

That undressing,

and the naked body underneath,

is the sweetness that comes after grief.

—Rumi