Again from my little haiku book…
The best-selling poet in the United States is a man from Persia who died about seven hundred and fifty years ago. He was a Sufi mystic with a really long name, but most people call him simply Rumi.
Research my claim on Rumi’s sales rank. I know it sounds bogus, what with the field of candidates including Whitman and Frost and Dickinson and Angelou and others. But ask your smart phone.
On the other hand, read a little bit from A Year with Rumi edited by Coleman Barks and see why he’s such a big hit these centuries later. Rumi included in one of his poems these lines, “Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. But don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer…”
And I get it. While sleeping and dreaming peaceful, the world is okay. Then, upon first waking, with what we know about this divided world, there’s an almost reflexive response to sigh.
But if we’ll stop our minds, and put aside bookish big ideas for a minute, we can sort of reboot with some basic gratitude. Glad for another chance at loving, smiling, and something beautiful. We can reclaim the day.
Rumi suggests taking down the dulcimer. There is also other music to be made. And we are all self-taught to make it.
28
Now I wake me up.
Dreams recede into cool dark.
Light changes everything.
Okay, I changed my mind. This one for the blurb, Kenny.
LOL
Your writing is music in the silence
I am grateful for your comment.
Whoah. This one. #28. Wow. It’s like … writing this one haiku could stand as a life’s work. You don’t need to have written another word. A zen master says to himself: “I’m going to write something.” He gardens. He fishes. He digs some ditches. He works in a office. Then one day, he zips off #28 in like 10 seconds. Then goes back to his garden. He’s written all he needs to write. This is why Rumi says to take down the dulcimer: one song can contain everything.