Poetry, Religion, Poetry

Being Six

Lots of thoughts to
Spin around
Arms outstretched
Feet love the ground
Whirl until it
All comes clear
Turn until
It disappears



When I wrote this poem, the image of a Whirling Dervish sprang to mind. Someone twisting around and around as children do. Except I wasn't sure exactly what a Dervish was. I thought it might be Indian or Middle Eastern...

Imagine my surprise to do a bit of research and find out that Whirling Dervishes are part of the religion of Islam. Even today, these followers live a life of poverty and humility and seek religious ecstacy through the intense motion of ritual dance.

I was even more surprised to note that the poet Rumi was a Whirling Dervish. Still one of the most widely read poets in America, Rumi writes exquisite poems of love, longing and the meaning of being. Like this one:

This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!

Yet somehow comes emptiness, this existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over!

For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, that work is over.

Free of who I was, free of presence,
free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece
of a piece of straw blown off into emptiness.

These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

Words and what they try to say
swept out the window, down the slant of the roof.

From Poems by Rumi