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hello loves.

i thought i'd post the entire rumi poem that i read aloud the other day on the webchat....which is here if you want to watch the whole thing: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/april-20-2020**

i wound up in a field today, quite unexpectedly.

i thought i'd take a picture to go along with it.

it seemed apt.

i am thinking of each and every one of you.

...............

if you want to hear a beautiful reading, there's a great version read by houman pourmehdi for "on being", a great podcast/show, https://onbeing.org/poetry/a-great-wagon)

...............

a great wagon


When I see your face, the stones start spinning!
You appear; all studying wanders.
I lose my place.

Water turns pearly.
Fire dies down and doesn’t destroy.

In your presence I don’t want what I thought
I wanted, those three little hanging lamps.

Inside your face the ancient manuscripts
Seem like rusty mirrors.

You breathe; new shapes appear,
and the music of a desire as widespread
as Spring begins to move
like a great wagon.
Drive slowly.
Some of us walking alongside
are lame!

~

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

~

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.

Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.

~

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

~

They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual?
They wonder about Solomon and all his wives.

In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul
and you are that.

But we have ways within each other
that will never be said by anyone.

~

Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

.......

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. 

I’ll meet you there.

i love you all so, so, so very much.

i'm reading comments. unload.

xxx

afp


 

------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

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Comments

Anonymous

That was a beautiful poem, energizing. It reminded me of making dandelion chains in fields and young love. Thank you

Anonymous

last night, we decided to forgo the field and met in the streets of Dublin <3

Jozias

I have to read again. I'm not open. It's hard for me. I like it when you live my dreams Amanda. You are like art. A singing bird in the tree. I can watch you for hours. That must be love. In my imagination I see you in the bottom feeder song. People try to touch you but you escape them like a butterfly. I can look at you just doing that for the coming two centuries and enjoy and love every move of your wings. I don't know if you are really who you are for me. I wish things never to happen. And already you escape away over the crowd. Be careful with those silky wings Amanda.

Shabnam

it never ceases to amaze me how prevalent this persian poet is in western culture. i see him quoted everywhere, all the time! would love to hear it in farsi - we have such a musical language :) but i can only find readings in english...

Anonymous

I feel so fucking irrelevant right now and so privileged at the same time. I know people are hurting so bad because of covid and also just because they are poor and don‘t have a place to call home. And i am so fucking frustrated because noone seems to care about anyone but themselves but at the same time i also just focus on myself and the people i love. And i am scared for them. My father is 74 and my whole life i thought about what i‘ll do if he dies and now it all feels so real. I don‘t know what to do except for just ceep on going and to try not to become crazy. I want to riot. I want to change the system i want Solidarity and at the same Time i just want to stop hurting.

Sunny

During the darkest month of my life, I read the collected poetry of Rumi from the floor of my room in a psychiatric hospital, by the thin streak of yellow light streaming in from the hallway through a crack in the door. I underlined passages with a stubby little golf pencil because it's the only writing implement I was allowed. I dog eared the pages. It was a seemingly tiny act, but being so moved by a poem that I wanted to save it, make sure I could find it again later... well, it was a physical representation of my choice to have a later at all. In one of the other posts you said something that really resonated with me. You said you were trying to be an unlonelyer. I couldn't quite figure out how to put into words what was coming up for me reading that, but when you started posting Rumi poems and self portraits, something clicked. It's like you always say, Amanda. Art is all about connecting the dots. My book of Rumi poems was a graduation present from my favorite teacher/mentor, and he'd put a little note on the inside cover; "Keep writing!" He didn't know that I was depressed, dealing with chronic pain from a mystery health problem and doctors who didn't listen. He didn't know that within the last couple years, four of my family members had been diagnosed with cancer. Or any of the other things that were happening at home, or outside of his classroom. But he knew I wrote poems and song lyrics, and that they made him feel something. And for me, that was one of the most unlonely-ing things I could possibly think of. That same year was when I first heard your music. You're one of the artists I listen to the most. I talk about your music to people, and your writing, and the community you cultivate and cherish. I talk about you like one of my close friends even though I haven't (yet) gotten to meet and hug you. I think about you often when I write and sing. I guess what I'm trying to say (and thank you for reading through all the rambly bits to get here) is that from the first note of the first song of yours I ever heard (The Killing Type, if you were wondering) you've been helping to unlonely my life. And I'm poignantly reminded right now of how much. Times are uncertain. Scary. Hard. But you're here, and you're sharing yourself, heart and soul, art and life. Albums to blog posts and everything between; your dots are my dots are their dots, and the way you connect is so powerful. I hope it will unlonely you a little when I say "Keep Writing!" It moves me more than I know how to thank you for every time you do. I love you.

DoppioKy

This last week, I finally found something I've been talking about for years. The end of my rope.

Molly McEnerney

Chloe Goodchild creates events called Singing Fields. "If we can as human beings remember how to sing that awareness back into our bodies then we are restoring equilibrium and unconditional loving presence back into humanity." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0yo96lMQvI

Tracey

💜🌱