Mid-tide

Every day, without effort,
the tide flows out
from beneath Falls Bridge.
It has its own pulse,
one that is pulled
by tidal currents
and propelled seaward.
From the standstill of mid-tide
it turns without thought
and takes its bearings
from a lunar pilot,
stirring calm aquamarine
into white water raging.

As it retreats
from the shore,
its lip retracts
from rocky promontories,
revealing kelp tresses
and caches of mussels
parched and thirsting
for sea juices.
Along sandy stretches
a booty chest is exposed--
sandollars, sea glass, periwinkles, slipper shells
an occasional four-legged star fish.
Heaved from the depths,
they wait to be plucked
by searching fingers,
stuck into linty pockets
or Shop 'n Save bags,
then dried and displayed
in a jar on a table
or made into earrings
that dangle from pulsing lobes.

Twelve hours hence,
as if at some silent signal,
the ocean inhales deeply.
Beneath Falls Bridge
water slows to a gentle swirl
then hovers
before turning inward
back to shore
to overflow tidal pools
and flow over kelp headresses
and barnacled boulders,
rising, rising.

The beach glitterati
that escaped the purvey
of beachcombers,
heave a collective sigh
as salt water tentacles
snatch them safely seaward
for another tide's time.
Sunbathers move towels back, back,
then stand,
shake out the day's belongings
and head homeward
as the sea pulls its covers
to the shore's neck.

My life waits at mid-tide,
suspended
between certainty and doubt--
hope and resignation--
presence and absence--
perseverance and letting go.

My life is swirling,
gently circling,
idling in flat water,
lacking lunar guidance.

Will it empty seaward
a final time?
Trickle inward
to fill niches
of soul and heart?
Rise up and rush over me
in a raging passion
that requites need?

It is the aimlessness
of mid-tide
that is difficult
to bear.
It foments questions
unanswerable
before tide's end.

The Guest House by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Bouyancy by Rumi

Love has taken away my practices
and filled me with poetry.

I tried to keep quietly repeating,
No strength but yours,
but I couldn't.

I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,
but who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
That's how I hold your voice.

I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
and quickly reduced to smoke.
I saw you and became empty.
This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence!

The sky is blue. The world is a blind man
squatting on the road.

But whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond blue and beyond the blind man.

A great soul hids like Muhammad, or Jesus,
moving through a crowd in a city
where no one knows him.

To praise is to praise
how one surrenders
to the emptiness.

To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.

So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. It's a total waking up!

Why should we grieve that we've been sleeping?
It doesn't matter how long we've been unconscious.

We're groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness
around you, the buoyancy.

Each Note by Rumi

Advice doesn't help lovers!
They're not the kind of mountain stream
you can build a dam across.

An intellectual doesn't know
what the drunk is feeling!

Don't try to figure
what those lost inside love
will do next!

Someone in charge would give up all his power,
if he caught one whiff of the wine-musk
from the room where the lovers
are doing who-knows-what!

One of them tries to dig a hole through a mountain.
One flees from academic honors.
One laughs at famous mustaches!

Life freezes if it doesn't get a taste
of this almond cake.
The stars come up spinning
every night, bewildered in love.
They'd grow tired
with that revolving, if they weren't.
They'd say,
"How long do we have to do this!

God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.
Each note is a need coming through one of us,
a passion, a longing-pain.
Remember the lips
where the wind-breath originated,
and let your note be clear.
Don't try to end it.
Be your note.
I'll show you how it's enough.

Go up on the roof at night
in this city of the soul.

Let everyone climb on their roofs
and sing their notes!

Sing loud!

Water From Your Spring by Rumi

What was in that candle's light
that opened and consumed me so quickly?

Come back, my friend! The form of our love
is not a created form.

Nothing can help me but that beauty.
There was a dawn I remember

when my soul heard something
from your soul. I drank water

from your spring and felt
the current take me.

Constant Conversation by Rumi

Who is the luckiest in this whole orchestra? The reed.
Its mouth touches your lips to learn music.
All reeds, sugarcane especially, think only
of this chance. They sway in the canebrakes,
free in the many ways they dance.

Without you the instruments would die.
One sits close beside you. Another takes a long kiss.
The tambourine begs, Touch my skin so I can be myself.
Let me feel you enter each limb bone by bone,
that what died last night can be whole today.

Why live some soberer way and feel you ebbing out?
I won't do it.
Either give me enough wine or leave me alone,
now that I know how it is
to be with you in a constant conversation.

The Blocked Road

Jelaluddin Rumi was born in 1207 and was a Persian theological scholar, teacher of Sufism, artist and poet. I've just begun to discover the beauty of his poetry. Here's one that spoke to me.



The Blocked Road



I wish I knew what you wanted.

You block the road and won't give me rest.

You pull my lead-rope one way, then the other.

You act cold, my darling!

Do you hear what I say?



Will this night of talking ever end?

Why am I still embarrassed and timid about you?

You are thousands. You are one.

Quiet, but most articulate.



Your name is Spring.

Your name is wine.

Your name is nausea

that comes from wine!



You are my doubting

and the lightpoints

in my eyes.



You are every image, and yet

I'm homesick for you.



Can I get there?

Where the deer pounces on the lion,

where the one I'm after's

after me?



This drum and these words keep pounding!

Let them both smash through their coverings

into silence.

Rumi