The Treasure's Nearness

A man searching for spirit-treasure

cannot find it, so he is praying.

A voice inside says, You were given

the intuition to shoot an arrow

and then to dig where it landed,

but you shot with all your archery skill.

You were told to draw the bow

with only a fraction of your ability.

What you are looking for

is nearer than the big vein

on your neck. Let the arrow drop.

Do not exhaust yourself

like the philosophers who strain to shoot

the high arcs of their thought-arrows.

The more skill you use,

the farther you will be

from what your deepest love wants.

Stingy Aloeswood

Fear and hurt are lassoes

drawing you through a door.

Lord, Lord, you say weeping.

Green herbs sprout where those tears fall.

Dawn comes; blindness drains away.

Each day is eternity.

Do not avoid your suffering.

Plunge it into the Nile.

Purify your stubbornness.

Drown it. Burn it.

Your body is a stingy piece of aloeswood

that will not let go its healing power

until you put it in the fire.

Now Shams leans near to remind me,

That's enough sourness. No more vinegar.

The Doctor Who Comes

View of Vienna from the Belvedere 1759-60, Bernardo Bellotto

In his dream an old man appeared.

Good king, I have news.

Tomorrow a stranger will come. I have sent him.

He is a physician you can trust.

Listen to him.

As dawn rose, the king was sitting

in the belvedere on his roof.

He saw someone coming, a person like the dawn.

He ran to meet this guest. Like swimmers

who love the water, their souls knit together

without being sewn, no seam.

The king opened his arms

and held the saintly doctor to him.

He led him to the head table.

At last I have found what patience can bring.

This one whose face answers any question,

who simply by looking can loosen

the knot of intellectual discussion.

Now Husam touches my arm.

He wants me to say more about Shams.

A Great Rose Tree

This is the day and the year of the rose.

The whole garden is opening with laughter.

Iris whispering to cypress.

The rose is the joy of meeting someone.

The rose is a world imagination

cannot imagine, a messenger

from the orchard where the soul lives.

A small seed that points

to the great rose tree.

Hold its hand and walk like a child.

A rose is what grows from the work

the prophets do, full moon, new moon.

Accept the invitation spring extends,

four birds flying toward a master.

A rose is all these and the silence

that closes and sits in the shade, a bud.

The Bright Core of Failure

Sometimes you enter the heart.

Sometimes you are born from the soul.

Sometimes you weep a song of separation.

It is all the same glory.

You live in beautiful forms,

and you are the energy that breaks form.

All light, neither this nor that.

Human beings go places on foot.

Angels, with wings.

Even if they find nothing but ruins

and failure, you are the bright core of that.

An Invisible Bee

Look how desire has changed in you,

how light and colorless it is,

with the world growing new marvels

because of your changing.

Your soul has become an invisible bee.

We don't see it working,

but there's the full honeycomb.

Your body's height, six feet or so,

but your soul rises through nine levels of sky.

A barrel corked with earth

and a raw wooden spile

keeps the oldest vineyard's wine inside.

When I see you,

it is not so much your physical form,

but the company of two riders,

your pure-fire devotion and your love

for the one who teaches you.

Then the sun and moon on foot behind those.

The Self We Share

Look fish, you are already in the ocean.

Just swimming there makes you friends with glory.

What are these grudges about?

You are Benjamin.

Joseph has put a gold cup in your grain sack

and accused you of being a thief.

Now he draws you aside and says,

You are my brother. I am a prayer. You are the Amen.

We move in eternal regions,

yet we worry about property here.

Let this be the prayer of each:

You are the source of my life.

You bring rivers from the mountain springs.

You brighten my eyes.

The wine you offer takes me out of myself

into the self we share.

Doing that is religion.