nomadic days & nights - a new project

These are very intensely focused days for me as we get closer to the births of another grandson (due Feb. 20) and a granddaughter (due Mar. 12). It is hard to get my head around this, but my heart has been ready for a while. :)

But the world goes on. As you know if you've known me long, news of the world's great (and small!) collapses weigh heavily on me, as they do upon you, too, no doubt. I find that I must be inspired by something for it all not to pull me down.

So I decided to begin a study that would help me focus in on a particular area, to get the context of history, art, music, literature. Because I've lived in Istanbul, I chose that part of the world.

I have started a new writing space for reflecting on these investigations. I will be posting there occasionally to reflect and better understand the current state of worldwide collapse. I want to live neither optimistically nor pessimistically, but realistically toward a transformation of humanity. It is a silk road, washed in blood and beauty.

I will keep posting here too, when I feel I must write a poem or something.

If you are interested in the topic, I would love to welcome you to that space. But please, do not feel obligated. I understand how much there is to read, and not enough time. I do relish conversation about these important things, but I start nomadic days & nights primarily for myself. I need to write in order to reflect. This will help me keep at it.

21 crows

I understand Wallace Stevens’ need to write thirteen ways. A multiplication, an exponential transformation occurs when I see these shining birds on roads of snow.

They are black jack dealt on a white table,

fortune and misfortune as one.

A constellation of flying stars,

of beaks and wings on a white sky

in the world’s negative.

Hunger falling in waves

like wind from broken trees.

They are 21 nights of insomnia —

a new habit of wakefulness.

Glyphs of a new language,

shining blue.

A black coat

lifting when I pass

floating back down

to clothe its dying friend.

They are a bridge from

sky to tree

tree to possum

possum to me.

They are strangers

or lovers

depending on the light.

They are infinity

mile by mile

Really, this could go on and on. I wonder what you see in 21 crows?

Juniper night

Outside the small window,

the juniper where I first 

saw bluebird, so shy I

frightened him away a year

appearing at the back door.

The tree now winter-cloaked,

ermine collared, the afternoon 

darks to evening, wanes

to diamond night, hoary moon

half bitten, ragged edge

like the ice-blue berry.

Wind ferocious and quiet,

but the half-moonball does not

rock out of sight, its

brilliant light turns diffident 

edge into blue night.

Wind that bends

the fingers of earth,

blues them into moonblight,

points my hair at the light,

closes its eyes, softly

lifts and puts our rest to flight.

Rumi's "wedding night"

It is December 17, the date Rumi lovers call his wedding night, for it is when he went to join the Beloved, the day he died in Konya, forever ending the agony of separateness:

A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,
cut holes in it, and called it a human being.

Since then, it has been wailing
a tender agony of parting,
never mentioning the skill
that gave it life as a flute.

The earth is frozen around me, feeling as if Life has gone. But Rumi's call is always to that inner heat that brings spring to the spirit.

Outside, the freezing desert night.
This other night inside grows warm, kindling.
Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust.
We have a soft garden in here.
The continents blasted,
cities and little towns, everything
become a scorched, blackened ball.

The news we hear is full of grief for that future,
but the real news inside here
is there's no news at all.

* * *

This is the day and the year of the rose.
The whole garden is opening with laughter.  

Iris whispering to cypress.
The rose is the joy of meeting someone. 

The rose is a world imagination cannot imagine.
A messenger from the orchard where the soul lives.  

A small seed that points to a great rose tree.
Hold its hand and walk like a child.  

A rose is what grows from the work the prophets do.
Full moon, new moon. 

Accept the invitation spring extends,
four birds flying toward a master.  

A rose is all these,
and the silence that closes and sits in the shade, a bud. 

And lest we forget, the cycle goes back the other way, too. The full moon becomes less. The flower opens so far that it falls, petal by petal, becoming the ground. If there's one thing Rumi's taught me, it is that when one thing comes, its seeming opposite is also right there coming behind. The wise man followed by the fool, crying followed by laughter. There is an ocean, and all of experience is in it, all different ways of knowing God. We're in a river flowing toward it.

My worst habit is I get so tired of winter
I become a torture to those I'm with.

If you are not here, nothing grows.
I lack clarity. My words
tangle and knot up.

How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.
How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.

When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean. There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can't hope.

The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back toward you.

Another year closes, just one of our inept categories, like insufficient words to express the mystery we follow. Truly, every next moment begins a new year. Go back to the river. Start flowing again.

Maybe this is one reason I love winter: It feels like a clean page.

— all Rumi translated by Coleman Barks