What is Love? Gratitude

Don't unstring your bow.

I am your four-feathered arrow

that has not been used yet.

I am a strong knifeblade word,

not some if or maybe, dissolving in air.

I am sunlight slicing the dark.

Who made this night?

A forge deep in the earth-mud.

What is the body?

Endurance.

What is love?

Gratitude.

What is hidden in our chests?

Laughter.

What else?

Compassion.

Don't ask what love can make or do.

Look at the colors of the world.

The riverwater moving in all rivers at once.

A Mouse and a Frog (2)

Illustration for an Aesop's fable found here

But one day the mouse complains, There are times

when I want sohbet, and you're out in the water,

jumping around where you can't hear me.

We meet at this appointed time,

but the text says, Lovers pray constantly.

Once a day, once a week, five times an hour,

is not enough. Fish like we are

need the ocean around us.

Do camel bells say, Let's meet back here Thursday night?

Ridiculous. They jingle

together continuously,

talking while the camel walks.

Do you pay regular visits to yourself?

Don't argue or answer rationally.

Let us die,

   and dying, reply.

*This is the night Rumi died, in 1273.

A Mouse and a Frog (1)

Photo of frog rescuing a mouse found here; 

it was shot in the flood waters of a 2006 Indian moonsoon

A mouse and a frog meet every morning on the riverbank.

They sit in a nook of the ground and talk.

Each morning, the second they see each other,

they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets,

empty of any fear or suspicious holding-back.

To watch and listen to those two

is to understand how, as it is written,

sometimes when two beings come together,

Christ becomes visible.

The mouse starts laughing out a story he hasn't thought of

in five years, and the telling might take five years.

There is no blocking the speechflow-river-running-

all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is.

Bitterness doesn't have a chance with those two.

The God-messenger Khidr touches a roasted fish.

It leaps off the grill back into the water.

Friend sits by Friend, and the tablets appear.

They read the mysteries off each other's foreheads.

Wean Yourself

Little by little, wean yourself.

This is the gist of what I have to say.

From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in blood,

move to an infant drinking milk,

to a child on solid food,

to a searcher after wisdom,

to a hunter of more invisible game.

Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.

You might say, The world outside is vast and intricate.

There are wheatfields and mountain passes

and orchards in bloom.

At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight

the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.

You ask the embryo why he or she stays cooped up

in the dark with its eyes closed.

Listen to the answer.

There is no "other world."

I only know what I have experienced.

You must be hallucinating.

The Nightwatchman (2)

Night Shadows, by Edward Hopper

 

The nightwatchman knows the way

from body to soul, how soul moves

in stomach bile, in blood and semen, in saliva.

Soul works inside those fluids

to keep the body fresh and full of energy.

So the stars and the planets and this world

are moving to bring grace here

through the cold night-clarity.

Events like battle arrows crisscross

from every direction. There is only one archer.

The skill of the sheepdog comes from the shepherd.

A city has a collective intelligence,

and each person there has a unique knowing.

Sometimes random bits pretend

to be a caravan, but it was a good messenger

who brought us the order out on the road

to Come back, Come back.

The Nightwatchman (1)

Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper

 

I sit by the side of one who watches

like the stars at night without sleeping watch.

My friend sits on the roof at night.

I attend that watching.

During the day I help with the gardening.

He is both a tender of flowers

and flowering trees.

It is no shame to be in this friendship,

or if it is, it is.

I was on my way elsewhere

when I saw the nightwatchman

sitting on the sky's roof like a guard.

Like a king, like a gardener in his garden,

rainwet stones, like the body's hand-me-down.

A Dying Dog

A Woman Bathing, Rembrandt van Rijn

A dog is dying on the road.

A man is weeping beside him. A beggar comes by.

Why the tears? This dog hunted game for me.

He kept watch at night.

Many times he drove away thieves.

What's wrong? Hunger has weakened him.

What's in the bag? Your food sack looks full.

Those are leftovers from last night.

I'll eat them later.

Give a little to the dog.

I give him these tears instead.

They are easier to come by.

Food on the road costs hard-earned money.

The beggar curses the man and leaves.

The beggar is right. The man's values are reversed.

Tears are worth more than money.

Tears are blood distilled into water.

Pay attention to those who want to change

so badly that they cry and dissolve

into lovingkindness and freedom.