Enough Words? by Rumi

Enough Words?
Rumi

How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?

Don’t try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire!
Don’t wash a wound with blood!

No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes, it’s in front!

Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there’s no fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree, feathers and wings sprout
on you, be quieter than a dove.
Don’t open your mouth for even a cooooooo.

When a frog slips into the water, the snake
cannot get it. Then the frog climbs back out
and croaks, and the snake moves toward him again.

Even if the frog learned to hiss, still the snake
would hear through the hiss the information
he needed, the frog voice underneath.

But if the frog could be completely silent,
then the snake would go back to sleeping,
and the frog could reach the barley.

The soul lives there in the silent breath.

And that grain of barley is such that,
when you put it in the ground,
it grows.

Are these enough words,
or shall I squeeze more juice from this?
Who am I, my friend?

Taken from The Essential Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks

Alley Cat Love Song by Dana Gioia

Gir, in cat heaven, I guess.

 

^--^     ^--^     ^--^     ^--^     ^--^



Alley Cat Love Song
By Dana Gioia

Come into the garden, Fred,
For the neighborhood tabby is gone.
Come into the garden, Fred.
I have nothing but my flea collar on,
And the scent of catnip has gone to my head.
I'll wait by the screen door till dawn.

The fireflies court in the sweetgum tree.
The nightjar calls from the pine,
And she seems to say in her rhapsody,
"Oh, mustard-brown Fred, be mine!"
The full moon lights my whiskers afire,
And the fur goes erect on my spine.

I hear the frogs in the muddy lake
Croaking from shore to shore.
They've one swift season to soothe their ache.
In autumn they sing no more.
So ignore me now, and you'll hear my meow
As I scratch all night at the door.

from:  Interrogations at Noon, 2001

 

================================

 

My brain is tabula rasa lately but for....I forget what. 

 

I am so sad about the evil happening in our world...those 200 girls kidnapped in Nigeria by those wicked, cruel COWARDS just breaks my heart and pisses me off royally.  As the mother of 2 daughters, I cannot imagine the pain their families must be enduring.... My prayers are with them all....

 

xo,
Marion

 

************************************

 

"I brought children into this dark world because it needed the light that only a child can bring." ~Liz Armbruster