Photo credit: Christiane E. Koehler, Nov. 2015
Birdwings
by Jalal al-Din Rumi
Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you’re bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.
— translators: Coleman Barks, John Moyne, “The Essential Rumi – reissue: New Expanded Edition”