Truth be told, if I could, I would obsessively read and study poetry many hours of many days. I love puzzles, I love enigmas, I love tricks and fancy plays of words. I love metaphors. I love lyrics and musicality.
I love poems. Even though they're "hard" to understand usually at first blush. That's what makes me really, really like them. They challenge me.
Tonight I read the following Rumi poem. I opened the collection I have sitting on my desk to a random page and then leafed around until I found the poem that seemed to be speaking to me through the pages...and this is the one I landed on, and it is beautiful and I feel absolutely drawn to the process of transcribing it here on my blog so that's what I'm going to do:
by Rumi
Spiritual experience is a modest woman
who looks lovingly at only one man,
It's a great river where ducks
live happily, and crows drown.
The visible bowl of form contains food
that is both nourishing and a source of heartburn.
There is an unseen presence we honor
that gives the gifts.
You're water. We're the millstone.
You're wind. We're dust blown up into shapes.
You're spirit. We're the opening and closing
of our hands. You're the clarity.
We're this language that tries to say it.
You're joy. We're all the different kinds of laughing.
Any movement or sound is a profession of faith,
as the millstone grinding is explaining how it believes
in the river! No metaphor can say this,
but I can't stop pointing
to the beauty.
Every moment and place says,
"Put this design in your carpet!"
Like the shepherd in Book II,
who wanted to pick the lice off God's robe,
and stitch up God's shoes, I want to be
in such a passionate adoration
that my tent gets pitched against the sky!
Let the beloved come
and sit like a guard dog
in front of the tent.
When the ocean surges,
don't let me just hear it.
Let it splash inside my chest!
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