Blossom - March 6, 2010

In April

the ponds

open

like black blossoms..

frogs shouting

their desire,

their satisfaction...

...What

we long for: joy

before death...

...What

we know: we are more

than blood-we are more

than our hunger and yet

we belong

to the moon and when the ponds

open, when the burning

begins the most

thoughtful among us dreams

of hurrying down

into the black petals,

into the fire,

into the night where time lies shattered,

into the body of another.

Sufi wisdom calls us to not forget the joy of union with another -w ith the moon, the sun, god, bird, lover, frog, pond. We yearn for this in the spring of our lives, roaming out in the night to forget the ache of our separation. Perhaps as we age when our bodies mellow as hormones free us from the maddening drive, we let slip into the background what we long for, and instead absorb ourselves into the daily grind. Rumi writes today in "The Milk of Millennia,"

I walk into a huge pasture.

I nurse the milk of millennia.

Everyone does this in different ways.

Knowing that conscious decisions

and personal memory

are much too small a place to live,

every human being streams at night

into the loving nowhere, or during the day,

in some absorbing work.

I awake this morning which falls just short of spring, seeing the thrown dirt of awakening tortoises in my backyard, and if I let myself crawl down their tunnels and wrap my soul around their hard shells, so that my own will crack.

What or with whom do you wish union?