Love's secret is always lifting its head
out from under the covers,
"Here I am!"

Excuse my wandering.
How can one be orderly with this?
It's like counting leaves in a garden,
along with the song-notes of partridges, and crows.

Sometimes organization
and computation become absurd.

Don't try to keep me from asking!
Listen, when I'm this out of control!
But don't put anything breakable in my way!

The body is a device to calculate the astronomy of the spirit.

Cry Out In Your Weakness
A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out.  Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come
so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard
your helplessness."

Where lowland is,
that's where water goes.  All medicine wants
is pain to cure

And don't just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in.  Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music…

Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness
to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper
and she's there.

God created the child, that is, your wanting
so that it may cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out!  Don't be stolid and silent
with your pain.  Lament!  And let the milk
of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.

Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.

Words are not important in themselves, but as resonators for a center.  Rumi has a whole theory of language based on the reed flute...  All language is a longing for home.

Every thirst gets satisfied except
that of these fish, the mystics,

who swim a vast ocean of grace
still somehow longing for it!

This is always how it is
when I finish a poem.

A great silence overcomes me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.

A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.
I don't want learning, or dignity, or respectability.
I want this music and this dawn and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

Patience expands your capacity to love and feel peace.