Rumi is one of those poets that has the power to bring you into the magic with just a few words. Things have been rather chaotic lately with my being pregnant and moving from Congo to Costa Rica. We’ve been taking little breaks here and there to sit and read Rumi’s poems to our unborn little one. It’s amazing how when reading these words the stress and anxiety just melts away and leaves only that ever-present joy vibrating in the deep self. This is a poem I read last night that did just that.
Wake and Walk Out
by RumiIf I flinched at every grief, I would be an intelligent idiot.
If I were not the sun, I’d ebb and flow like sadness.
If you were not my guide, I’d wander lost in Sanai.
If there were no light, I’d keep opening and closing the door.
If there were no rose garden, where would the morning breezes go?
If love did not want music and laughter and poetry, what would I say?
If you were not medicine, I would look sick and skinny.
If there were no leafy limbs in the air, there would be no wet roots.
If no gifts were given, I’d grow arrogrant and cruel.
If there were no way into god, I would not have lain in the grave of this body for so long.
If there were no way from left to right, I could not be swaying with the grasses.
If there were no grace and no kindness, conversation would be useless, and nothing we do would matter.
Listen to the new stories that begin every day.
If light were not beginning again in the east, I would not now wake and walk out inside this dawn.
Magic 31/365, Sunrise over Angkor Wat, Siam Reap, Cambodia, July 2016
