For Muslim Sufi poet, Jalal al-Din Rumi
1.
And when the hawk dove
from the cliff, he knew nothing
of direction, but fell
as if the air was a river and he had thrown
himself into its current like a person
diving and turning onto his back, floating
on water, but here, the hawk, on his chest,
and on air, and letting the current carry him
to that grove of trees where he
glides into shadow and into
leaves brushing against his
feathered body that now senses
darkness, and the branches and
tree trunks, and the roots
crawling into ground, the darkest of shadows.
2.
So he lets the current take him
into the open
air of meadow and high grass
which he hears bending in the breeze, suppliant
to that which is everywhere and past
the arc and boundaries of life and death, and
he floats out of that meadow
air and into the desert
so open that one breath becomes an expanse of
flight that he breathes into eternity, a door wide open,
and hands there, cupped and offering
him water that falls
onto his head and awakens
him with drops like small gusts of wind
shuddering against his eyes, or like palms
along the flesh of human cheeks, or like a paddle
slipping silently into water so deep
it becomes air to breathe, and to fly
through, and even to perch upon
as if a branch that’s a home that floats, suspended
and now losing shape like a drop finished
splashing, a diving so returned to its element that
the dive begun is forgotten, gone, and now all one
element of time, space, and that place
of everywhere, but now all
at once and returned
home to the ocean
of our being.
Pete Follansbee likes writing in the early morning dark and lives in Richmond, VA, a good place to survive climate change and political upheaval. His poems have been finalists in contests and have found publication in The North American Review, Barrow Street, The New Guard, About Place, New Millenium Writings, and elsewhere. An MFA graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, Pete was a T.A. for poet Tim Seibles at the summer 2017 edition of The Writer’s Hotel and a Faculty Assistant for their 2021 Virtual Poetry Weekend. Pete has a website of his published poems at petefollansbee.com.