I was happy enough to stay still
inside the pearl inside the shell,
but the hurricane of experience
lashed me out of hiding and made me
a wave moving into shore, saying loudly
the ocean’s secret as I went, and then
spent there, I slept like fog against
the cliff, another stillness.
***
I used to have fiery intensity
and a flowing sweetness.
The waters were illusion.
The flames, made of snow.
Was I dreaming then?
Am I awake now?
***
I run around looking for the Friend.
My life is almost over,
but I’m still asleep!
When it happens, if it happens,
that I meet the Friend,
will I get the lost years back?
***
We search the world for the great untying
of what was wed to us with birth
and gets undone at dying.
We sleep beside a stream, thirsty.
Cursed and unlucky his whole life,
an old man finishes up in a niche
of a ruin, inches from the treasure!
***
There is a desert
I long to be walking,
a wide emptiness:
peace beyond any
understanding of it.
Rumi
trans. Coleman Barks
in Birdsong (1993)
THE POETRY PLACE 
Good day Jane,
Thanks for posting these poems. I have a question about WordPress formatting. I have tried many ways but cannot get the line within each poem to space between each other the way you do them. Would you be so kind to tell me how you did it?
Thank you!
Jacky
To get the line spacing, I just click twice the icon at the top of my new post that looks like this:
#—
#—
#—
(where the # = a little blue square box and the dashes indicate a line)
and the lines are then formatted correctly.
Hope that helps … thanks for reading “The Poetry Place”! 🙂
Thanks Jane for the reply. Where is this icon you are describing? This button is part of the visual editor?
Thank you for helping a fellow blogger out 🙂