Please send sandwiches…

 

      Here is a Hafiz poem for those of us who have spent time meditating on silent retreat and have also been on antidepressants:

 

Not many teachers in this world

Can give you as much enlightenment

In one year

 

As sitting all alone, for three days,

In your closet

Would

Do.

 

That means not leaving.

Better get a friend or two to help with

A few sandwiches

and

the chamber pot.

 

And no reading in there or writing poems,

That would be cheating;

Aim high—

for a 360 degree

Detox.

 

That sitting alone, though, is

Not recommended

 

If you are normally

Sedated

 

Or have ever been under a doctor’s

Surveillance because of your

Brain.

 

Dear one,

Don’t let Hafiz fool you–

 

A ruby is buried

Here.

_______

     My brain has been under surveillance for years, but the results have been spotty at best.  If you’re looking for me, check in the closet.

 

_______

     My friend Trew Bennett, from Buck Creek Pottery in Faber, Virginia, sent this in response:

 

I don’t sit alone, well I do, but not for three days,

at least not yet.

But I do pot alone…and sometimes that spinning wheel
 

on a rainy, foggy day,
 

seems to whisper encouraging secrets to me…
 

and so I keep on potting…
 

_________
 

  

     Thursday evening I’m appearing on a panel of writers that is titled, “The Gods Must Be Crazy: The Intersection of Spirituality and Writing.”   Again, Hafiz to the rescue:
 

What
 

Is the
 

Root of all these
 

Words?
 

One thing: love.
 

But a love so deep and sweet
 

It needed to express itself
 

With scents, sounds, colors
 

That never before
 

Existed.
 

    Now if I can somehow stretch that out into a two-hour panel discussion….

 

 

 

 

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