Walking With Rumi
WALKING WITH RUMI
It’s a religious routine, his impious
use of scripture and prayer calling on god
for salvation and sustenance, purity of heart,
perhaps a way better job, or some actual proof
that his people still matter
His, is a god who uses archangels, heavily-armed
toughs, assassins and avengers, roaming the streets
of a gray paradise (neither heaven nor hell), their
big wings folded, their bow strings ready, their
quivers full of arrows, flaming swords sheathed,
their intelligent eyes marking dark, handsome faces
and awaiting the directives for savage air strikes
at far-away places, somehow weaving a route through
meridians and parallels, angling in low through the
hazy red dawn or coming in as silhouette against a
full silver moon to deliver against enemies
or just the people next door
Forever on his knees, he solicits relief
but I have other plans – I go walking with Rumi
a daredevil dervish who treats the concept of love as
a magnificent machine to be recklessly driven without
fear of collision or collateral damage
And he offers a dream about poems in Persian and songs
on the wind from a light without source
that illuminates all
High above Santiago, its six million souls and steep
mountain walls a dialectical drama about fertility and
faith, we negotiate a ledge, he walking on air, me hugging
the edge, still afraid of the tumble that could easily
shatter the glistening glass that I am
But there is something I know: My wife will come soon
with a full winter moon like a big tambourine over the
Andes at night, and they will play in the evening, they
will dance with the darkness and swallow the day
and then give it back, laughing, in the bold early
light of the red rising sun, and decorum aside,
I will dive off that ledge into all that she is,
into all that I’m not; let her make
me better and thank God that she can!
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