Dahlia

“There's no one with intelligence in this town except that man over there playing with the children, the one riding the stick horse. He has keen, fiery insight and vast dignity like the night sky, but he conceals it in the madness of child's play.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Brother, stand the pain.
Escape the poison of your impulses.
The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do.
Learn to light the candle. Rise with the sun.
Turn away from the cave of your sleeping.
That way a thorn expands to a rose.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“The Ripe Fig

Now that You live here in my chest,
anywhere we sit is a mountaintop.

And those other images,
which have enchanted people
like porcelain dolls from China,
which have made men and women weep
for centuries, even those have changed now.

What used to be pain is a lovely bench
where we can rest under the roses.

A left hand has become a right.
A dark wall, a window.

A cushion in a shoe heel,
the leader of the community!

Now silence. What we say
is poison to some
and nourishing to others.

What we say is a ripe fig,
but not every bird that flies
eats figs.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Whoever's calm and sensible is insane!”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi