...At the point we allow others to decide for us what is good, at that point we begin to lose a vital sense of language as something personal, mysterious, transformative. And when we apply to poetry the kind of discrimination that academia encourages, we jeopardize the very source of that personal, mysterious, transformative quality...

John of the Cross

They are like a sun, words. They can do for the heart what light can for a field.

The way of love is not
a subtle argument.
The door there
is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling,
they are given wings.

-- Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground

Today, like every other day , we wake up empty and frightened
Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."
- Rumi-

What Are You Listening For?

You have heard, I think, the story of the cricket on Bloor Street. Now, Bloor Street is a busy street and at rush hour it can become quite noisy: honking cars, idling cars with poor mufflers, people calling, busses rushing, and those signals for the blind on the lights – “cuckoo, cuckoo; pink–a, pink–a.” How she heard it, I don’t know, but with wide eyes she said to her friend, “I hear a cricket.”

Her friend lifted her eyebrow.

“No, really.” She took her friend by the arm and led her across the street and then slowly along the other side. Stopping at a flower barrel, she peered inside. After pushing a few dead leaves aside, she exclaimed, “Ah-ha! Here it is!”

The friend was amazed. “Whoa,” she said, “You must have bionic hearing!”

“No,” she said. She took a handful of change form her coat pocket, she tossed it on the ground. Everyone within thirty feet stopped and looked down.

“It’s just a matter of what you are listening for.”