Untitled Poem by Rumi (photo by Willy)

If you want what visible reality
can give, you're an employee.

If you want the unseen world,
you're not living your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,
but you'll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love's confusing joy.

Gamble everything for love,
if you're a true human being.

If not, leave
this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn't reach
into majesty. You set out
to find God, but then you keep
stopping for long periods
at mean-spirited roadhouses.

In a boat down a fast-running creek,
it feels like trees on the bank
are rushing by. What seems

to be changing around us
is rather the speed of our craft
leaving this world.

Withdrawal

What would I say to you if you were here with me?
Now? This very night?

Would my eyes betray my confusion?
Or would they be smoky with hurt?

My head, tilted to one side,
would it feel unsure and heavy,
upon my tense shoulder blades?

My hands, would they be nervous,
twisting my rings non-stop
around my fingers?

Would I frown in concentration,
in silent agony, of how, or whether,
to begin?

Would I want to bury my head in your neck,
your arms wrapped around me, snugly?

My cheek, would it soon rest upon your chest,
breathing in your scent, content to be in your embrace?

Or would my wet salty tears appear
cool my burning face,
and soak through to your skin?

Birch Bark Biting

Birch bark bitings are thin layers of birch bark with a design bitten into the bark with the eye tooth. The designs were originally used to create patterns for decorative work applied to traditional leather clothing. Now the art of birch bark biting is being learned by young people interested in reviving what could have become a lost tradition.
Sally McKenzie from Grandmothers Bay Indian Reserve (Kohkominanihk in Cree) on the Churchill River in northern Saskatchewan learned the art of biting from her mother about ten years ago. Mattilda Roberts was taking a break from making birch bark baskets. She took a small piece of birch bark and began tearing it until it was the right thickness. Then she traced a pattern on the bark with her fingernail, folded the bark as you would to make a paper snowflake and began biting.

Sally was curious to learn how to do this, so her mother showed her how to select the bark, how to make the right thickness, and how to use her eye tooth to create the pattern.

Sally is now teaching her young daughter, Valerie.

The Almond

The almond tree announced
your secret softness
which had been hiding
behind the garden wall.

Your scent is subtle, yet heady
as jasmine on a hot humid night.
Or lavender, once crushed between my fingers,
announces its presence.

Laughter, unbidden,
bubbles and tumbles
out of my mouth, my belly, my heart,
in answer to your desire.

The warmth of the sun
is like your smile, dear one.
It melts into me and nurtures me.

Robin Red Breast

Poems by Rumi

Each Note

Advice doesn't help lovers!
They're not the kind of mountain stream
you can build a dam across.

An intellectual doesn't know
what a drunk is feeling!

Don't try to figure
what those lost inside love
will do next!

Someone in charge would give up all his power,
if he caught one whiff of the wine-musk
from the room where the lovers
are doing who-knows-what!

One of them tries to dige a hole through a mountain.
One flees from academic honours.
One laughs at famous mustaches!

Life freezes if it doesn't get a taste
of this almond cake.
The stars come up spinning
every night, bewildered in love.
They'd grow tired
with that revolving, if they weren't.
They'd say,
"How long do we have to do this?"

God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.
Each note is a need coming through one of us,
a passion, a longing-pain.
Remember the lips
where the wind-breath originated,
and let your note be clear.
Don't try to end it.
Be your note.
I'll show you how it's enough.

Go up on the roof at night
in this city of the soul.

Let everyone climb on their roofs
and sing their notes!

Sing loud!


Granite and Wineglass

You are granite.
I am an empty wineglass.

You know what happens when we touch!
You laugh like the sun coming up laughs
at a star that disappears into it.

Love opens my chest, and thought
returns to its confines.

Patience and rational considerations leave.
Only passion stays, whimpering and feverish.

Some men fall down in the road like dregs thrown out.
Then, totally reckless, the next morning

they gallop out with new purposes. Love
is the reality, and poetry is the drum

that calls us to that. Don't keep complaining
about loneliness! Let the fear-language of that theme

crack open and float away. Let the priest come down
from his tower, and not go back up!


The Shape of My Tongue

This mirror inside me shows...
I can't say what, but I can't not know!

I run from body. I run from spirit.
I do not belong anywhere.

I'm not alive!
You smell the decay?

You talk about my craziness.
Listen rather to the honed-blade sanity I say.

This gourd head on top of a dervish robe,
do I look like someone you know?

This dipper gourd full of liquid,
upsidedown and not spilling a drop!

I form a cloud over that ocean
and gather spillings.

When Shams is here,
I rain.

After a day or two, lilies sprout,
the shape of my tongue.

Night on the Island, a poem by Pablo Neruda

All night I have slept with you
next to the sea, on the island.
Wild and sweet you were between pleasure and sleep,
between fire and water.

Perhaps very late
our dreams joined
at the top or at the bottom,
up above like branches moved by a common wind,
down below like red roots that touch.

Perhaps your dream
drifted from mine
and through the dark sea
was seeking me
as before,
when you did not yet exist,
when without sighting you
I sailed by your side,
and your eyes sought
what now -
bread, wine,love, and anger -
I heap upon you
because you are the cup
that was waiting for the gifts of my life.

I have slept with you
all night long while
the dark earth spins
with the living and the dead,
and on waking suddenly
in the midst of the shadow
my arm encircled your waist.

Neither night nor sleep
could separate us.

I have slept with you
and on waking, your mouth,
come from your dream,
gave me the taste of earth,
of sea water, of seaweed,
of the depths of your life,
and I received your kiss
moistened by the dawn
as if it came to me
from the sea that surrounds us.

My Birthday Shoe

Outside the Minnesota State Line PART 2 unpaused by "Axwy"

She came back toting two wine glasses made of blue glass, the wine and opener. Handing the bottle to him, she smiled as she looked away, krinkly eyes and upturned lips. He realized she had been made shy by his unspoken offer to open the wine.

"Axwy" is a fine descriptor for this self-conscious phenomena women tend to indulge in! he thought to himself. Perhaps he would begin to use it: "Axwy". Yes, in his next text message! To see what response might result. If pressed to define it, he would. Only on occasion would he use it. A rare occurrence, no doubt. Unless he were to make it a practice, even a ritual to have occasion to use the "Axwy" expression at least one time per day. No, make that one time per week, instead. For how could he ever guarantee finding a woman exhibiting just that shyness on a weekly basis? That task alone would occupy his thoughts and his actions rather completely, let alone thinking up something which might elicit just such a response in her. He squinted into the glass, his mind taken by the thread.

So did I ever tell you the story of the resourceful Albanian? she asked, pouring the wine into his glass and offering him a taste.

Yes, I believe you did. He replied. Slighty smirking, he opened his eyes wide with mischief. He nodded to affirm that the wine was tasty, so she filled their glasses.

You really are unfair! she giggled, and she began the story...