the magnetic field
It wasn’t that I had forgotten you. I just went on living.
I live in silence. I remember when it was.
How the world moved slow, magnetic.
Still, passing overhead, things you imagined to be the world,
are you. How the branches of the pipal tree bow close to one another.
How the river wipes the brow of the riverbed.
The sky opens the door, and rain falls through.
The monsoon’s wet hands move over the strings of a sitar.
How fire warms the air around it.
How devoted these small things are.
Silken robes spin you through the cosmos as if they were you.
Whatever you look for, you are.
I call to it. It answers. There is no end to this call and answer.
Only that which is inside the small seed
will understand the love earth had for it as a tree.
It is only the magnetic field who understands nothing
but the will to make things grow.
first draft, on the eve of Rumi’s 800th birthday