Mary Oliver, Rumi and Me.

Mary Oliver.  Photograph by Rob Howard.

This morning on NPR, poet Mary Oliver, in a promo for her new book A Thousand Mornings, spoke of prayer becoming more integrated into her mornings and quoted Rumi: "Hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." Because this quote resonates with my own experience living and also with writing poetry, I googled the quote and found that it came from a longer Rumi poem available on line from The Wandering Minstrels:

Rumi

                              (Poem #472)






Spring Giddiness

 Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
 and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
 and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
 Let the beauty we love be what we do.
 There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

 The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
 Don't go back to sleep.
 You must ask for what you really want.
 Don't go back to sleep.
 People are going back and forth across the doorsill
 where the two worlds touch.
 The door is round and open.
 Don't go back to sleep.

 I would love to kiss you.
 The price of kissing is your life.
 Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
 What a bargain, let's buy it.

 Daylight, full of small dancing particles
 and the one great turning, our souls
 are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
 Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

 All day and night, music,
 a quiet, bright
 reedsong. If it
 fades, we fade.

-- Jalaluddin Rumi    

Today--actually yesterday and all night--I have been meditating on my fears because of a challenge at the on-line poetry workshop group dVerse Poets Pub to write about fears and phobias.   Rumi's poem speaks directly to that.  I am a horn, a brassy instrument, I fear the air ceasing to enliven me.  Here I am, let me play.  I am song, therefore I am.

Me