Walking With Rumi

WALKING WITH RUMI It’s a religious routine, his impious use of scripture and prayer calling on god for salvation and sustenance, purity of heart, perhaps a way better job, or some actual proof that his people still matter His, is a god who uses archangels, heavily-armed toughs, assassins and avengers, roaming the streets of a gray paradise (neither heaven nor hell), their big wings folded, their bow strings ready, their quivers full of arrows, flaming swords sheathed, their intelligent eyes marking dark, handsome faces and awaiting the directives for savage air strikes at far-away places, somehow weaving a route through meridians and parallels, angling in low through the hazy red dawn or coming in as silhouette against a full silver moon to deliver against enemies or just the people next door Forever on his knees, he solicits relief but I have other plans – I go walking with Rumi a daredevil dervish who treats the concept of love as a magnificent machine to be recklessly driven without fear of collision or collateral damage And he offers a dream about poems in Persian and songs on the wind from a light without source that illuminates all High above Santiago, its six million souls and steep mountain walls a dialectical drama about fertility and faith, we negotiate a ledge, he walking on air, me hugging the edge, still afraid of the tumble that could easily shatter the glistening glass that I am But there is something I know: My wife will come soon with a full winter moon like a big tambourine over the Andes at night, and they will play in the evening, they will dance with the darkness and swallow the day and then give it back, laughing, in the bold early light of the red rising sun, and decorum aside, I will dive off that ledge into all that she is, into all that I’m not; let her make me better and thank God that she can!