by Rumi
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder.
Help someone's soul heal.
Walk out
of your house like a shepherd.
The Poet Goes to Indiana by Mary Oliver
I'll tell you a half-dozen things that happened to me in Indiana when I went that far west to teach. You tell me if it was worth it. I lived in the country with my dog— part of the bargain of coming. And there was a pond with fish from, I think, China. I felt them sometimes against my feet. Also, they crept out of the pond, along its edges, to eat the grass. I'm not lying. And I saw coyotes, two of them, at dawn, running over the seemingly unenclosed fields. And once a deer, but a buck, thick-necked, leaped into the road just-oh, I mean just, in front of my car— and we both made it home safe. And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses, or the three horses that belonged to the owner of the house, and I bargained with him, if I could catch the fourth, he, too, would have hooves trimmed for the Indiana winter, and apples did it, and a rope over the neck did it, so I won something wonderful; and there was, one morning, an owl flying, oh pale angel, into the hay loft o...
Hi Annie, thanks for coming to my blog and leaving a comment-love the Rumi poem!
ReplyDeleteHow funny. I just wrote a poem and in the last lines I am carrying a staff, like a shepherd. Rumi is so great. So wise.
ReplyDeleteI should post this on my kitchen door.
ReplyDeleteTouched me deeply...
How is it that this 13th Century Persian can get it so right...
ReplyDelete