There is Something in Us

Imagine a man selling his donkey

to be with Jesus.

Now imagine him selling Jesus

to get a ride on a donkey.

This does happen.

Jesus can transform a drunk into gold.

If the drunk is already golden,

he can be changed into pure diamond.

If already that, he can become the circling

planets, Jupiter, Venus, the moon.

Never think that you are worthless.

God has paid an enormous amount for you,

and the gifts keep arriving.

There is something in us

that has nothing to do with night and day,

grapes that never saw a vineyard.

WE ARE ALL RETURNING

says the Qur'an. Enjoy Shams,

or if you cannot do that, at least

consider what honest people tell you.

Don't Let Your Throat Tighten

Ocean Swells, by Arthur B. Davies

Don't let your throat tighten

with fear. Take sips of breath

all day and night, before death

closes your mouth.

Sometimes I Do

In your light I learn how to love.

In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest,

where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,

and that light becomes this art.

Birdwings

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror

up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,

here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open,

you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence

is in every small contracting and expanding,

the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated

as birdwings.

The Elegance of the Ermine

Midnight, and a messenger comes from a prayer niche,

someone as quiet as moonlight,

yet with a torch that burns our sleeping.

A king knocks on the doorkeeper's door

and laughing, leads everyone out to a table.

Our lips tremble at the cup, with the same trembling

as a drop of mercury.

The gentleness of the host is the same

as that that made the elegance of the ermine.

The dry and wet of a love affair,

those tears are identical to the taking in

and giving away of a waterwheel's turning.

The keys that open all gates

are strapped to love's chest.

When a bird is completely broken and still,

it gets removed from the snare.

This list of rude likenesses

does not come near saying

what happens in our lives.

Children Running Through

Bacchante and Infant Faun, by Frederick William MacMonnies

I used to be shy.

You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at table.

Now I shout for more wine.

In somber dignity, I used to sit

on my mat and pray.

Now children run through

and make faces at me.

A Single Brushstroke Down

Light dawns, and any talk of proof

resembles a blind man's cane at sunrise.

Remember the passage,

We are with you wherever you are.

Come back to that.

When did we ever leave it?

No matter we're in a prison of forgetting

or enjoying the banquet of wisdom,

we are always inside presence.

Drunkenly asleep, tenderly awake,

clouded with grief, laughing like lightning,

angry at war, quiet with gratitude, we are nothing

in this many-mooded world of weather

but a single brushstroke down,

speaking of presence.

*The word Allah in Arabic begins with a strong downward mark.