Rumi died as a deep red sunset filled the sky
the evening of December 17, 1287.
I was born the morning of December 18,
nearly seven centuries later and half a world away.
 
Of course it is presumptuous to imagine
that the great Persian poet found a new incarnation in my distant being.
I’m an aimless wanderer in his ecstatic realm,
a fleeting bubble in his vat of sparkling wine.

Yet a common thirst animates our quest:
a yearning for sohbet with the divine.
 
Lion of the spirit, you taught me
to roar with an eternal breath,
to plunder the silent spaces between worlds,
to release the pearl of beauty from the shell of desire.

Emperor of passion, you taught me that poems
are rough notations for the music rising within,
to see the Beloved in the eyes of strangers and
dance to the melody that connects all souls.

You told me to stop weaving and watch the pattern improve,
to quit counting grains in the sands of time,
to stop treading the river of like and dislike
and bathe in the still water of is.

Relinquishing the self, you made a livelihood of dying,
ego melting like snow, washed of itself.

Awakening within your dream of sleep,
I see moonlight peering through the attic window of the past.
I follow your voice, cross the desert to an oasis of peace.

I have no more words.

There is a place I go when I am still.
An immense world.
A vast realm of silence.
 
I listen to my breath,
exhale my nagging thoughts,
become aware of my awareness.
I focus on the colored dots
swarming just behind my eyelids.
 
Often, that’s as far as I get,
hovering on the boundary of my waking life,
sitting quietly on my yoga mat or outdoors at sunrise.
 
But sometimes I go deeper.
 
The first time I crossed the threshold
I felt a surge of elation.
The dots became stars.
The colors luminesced and expanded
like the patterns in the iTunes Visualizer.
 
My consciousness unfolded.
I felt like I was falling,
a sudden vertigo that reminded me of
being launched into hyperspace
from my seat at the Cine Capri Theater.
 
I arrived at a place without words,
beyond want or need,
reproach or blame.
 
My peace surpassed understanding.
 
I go back when I can,
hover for a moment or a year,
floating on a buoyant dream.
I hear sounds on the edge of awareness.
I feel tears on the face of the body I inhabit.
 
When I am bold I practice dying.
Just a peek, mind you.
I flirt with the Great Beyond,
feel the hand of the almighty
emerge from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak
and tickle the backside of my soul.
 
I often wonder what happens in these moments,
a union with cosmic consciousness
or a simple dance of neurons?
 
Will my being survive?
Will I recognize you there?
Will it be you
or the person I see when I look through you,
past the golden flecks in your aquamarine eyes?
 
When I was young they told me
I could get to heaven just by believing.
I would have my own mansion
and my hair would always be perfect.
 
Not everybody could attain this state of grace, they added.
It would be easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle
than to squeeze my giant ego into that blessed land.
 
Jesus helped me solve this eternal riddle.
The Kingdom of God is within you,
he told me, tapping his chest.
I needn’t do anything special to inhabit this realm:
 
Just dust off the innocence
I left on the top shelf of my childhood.
 
And so I sit, now and again, and just be.
I let go of cognition. I follow my bliss.
The door opens naturally after a few steady breaths.
 
# # #

ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ ἐντὸς ὑμῶν

It’s not every day you meet
a Los Alamos scientist in a swimming pool,
well tanned and newly retired, lounging on
the Fed’s largesse.

It’s a problem of ignition, he tells me,
describing his work at the government lab,
where Nobel Prize winners
colluded with explosive experts
to change the course of history.
Fission reactions are fickle, he adds,
balancing his drink on a raft
beneath the blazing sun.

Of course they don’t smuggle in physicists
on secret trains anymore.
Fat Boy has long since flattened Nagasaki
and Little Boy threw a tantrum in Hiroshima.
That’s one reason we’re relaxing
in this giant pool seventy years later,
he argues,
cowering under the harsh light of conscience
and squinting at the Sonoran sun.

Sixteen kilotons of TNT produce just a fraction
of the energy warming my back, I calculate,
conscious of the half life of ice cubes
melting in my glass at the edge of the pool
and admiring the fashions of Bikini Atoll,
where we displaced the locals for a bit of nuclear mayhem.
You can have your island back, we told them,
sixteen mushroom clouds later.
It’s a lovely place to raise your mutant children.

The Feds took care of that as well.
$550 per person per year in restitution—
about the cost of a night at this desert oasis,
a blink of a lash in the ashes of time.

Radioactivity is accumulating in my bones.
I dive deep, dodging the fallout of earnest delusion
and pondering chain reactions of the heart.
I’d rather be in Florida, where scientists serenaded the moon.

“For a good hour I have been singing lays in langue d’oc to a woman who knows only langue d’oil …

My sentiments are tangled like kites in the branches of her incomprehension.”

– Billy Collins

Inspiration greets me at dawn
when my mind is uncluttered,
merging with dreams.
My thoughts line up neatly,
shoulder to shoulder,
their shoes polished to a high gloss.
A new poem is born.

Unfortunately
by the time I get to the typewriter
my lively libretto has broken ranks.
Words march into the wrong stanzas.
Sentences fall out of formation
or go back to bed.

I had to teach myself
to contain this mischievous regiment,
to marshal the clarity of first light.
At first I looked for inspiration in obvious places.
I watched the dog curl up in a patch of contentment.
I heard moonlight tiptoe across the terrace.

Soon my perspective expanded.
I began to see beauty everywhere.
I learned to read nature’s songbook
and write in the language of flowers:
The noble roses of matrimony.
The haughty hubris of the narcissus.
The sudden crush of a wildflower
springing up amid life’s well-tended fields.

One windy night my muse sat right next to me in a tavern.
I saw distant horizons in her eyes.
I composed mythic melodies beneath her balcony.
My words formed a battalion and broke into song.
I woke up much later,
sensibility gone AWOL,
howling at the moon.

Now I plant my poems in a box by the window,
airy aspirations springing up in plain view.
My house of words is under construction,
roofless and open to the sky,
waiting for a gentle rain of insight from above.

You can find me beneath the palms,
untangling the breeze.
I’ll be the gardener whose verse needs pruning,
the dog that gnaws on the bone of contrition,
the earnest author of his own demise.

Eight hundred million years ago
this rock was formed from molten magma.
During the last Ice Age
it was shorn from a cliff as a glacier passed by.
Yesterday I handed it to you.

It was a pinnacle moment,
basking in the sun beside a cheerful brook,
surrounded by wildflowers.
Our feet were sore after the three-mile ascent.
I took off my boots to feel the spongy grass,
wade through the icy stream
and pluck a smooth stone from its Alpine bed,
polished by eons.

“Feel the temperature of the earth,” I said,
offering you a tiny piece of the mountain,
bone of the Sierra, flesh of my flesh.
It was my way of saying I love you
and all the things we share.

I tucked it away as we started our descent,
a souvenir of our elation,
an oath of allegiance
as the continent yawns between us.

So when the earth moves unexpectedly
or you feel a fever coming on,
clasp this stone
and remember that day in Sky Meadow.

When the temperature was just right.