Maybe
Sweet Jesus, talking
his melancholy madness,
stood up in the boat
and the sea lay down,
silky and sorry.
So everybody was saved
that night.
But you know how it is
when something
different crosses
the threshold--the uncles
mutter together,
the women walk away
the young brother begins
to sharpen his knife.
Nobody knows what the soul is.
It comes and goes
like the wind over the water--
sometimes, for days,
you don't think of it.
Maybe, after the sermon,
after the multitude was fed,
one or two of them felt
the soul slip forth
like a tremor of pure sunlight,
before exhaustion,
that wants to swallow everything,
gripped their bones and left them
miserable and sleepy
as they are now, forgetting
how the wind tore at the sails
before he rose and talked to it--
tender and luminous and demanding
as he always was--
a thousand times more frightening
than the killer sea.
--Mary Oliver
Today
I
Do not
Want to step so quickly
Over a beautiful line on God's palm
As I move through the earth's
Marketplace
Today.
I do not want to touch any object in this world
Without my eyes testifying to the truth
That everything is
My Beloved.
Something has happened
To my understanding of existence
That now makes my heart always full of wonder
And kindness.
I do not
Want to step so quickly
Over this sacred place on God's body
That is right beneath your
Own foot.
As I
Dance with
Precious life
Today.
--Hafiz
No comments:
Post a Comment