everything you could be by now

Death has nothing to do with going away. The sun sets and The moon sets But they are not gone.

________

“ON THE DAY I DIE” | Rumi

On the day I die, when I'm being carried

toward the grave, don't weep. Don't say,

He's gone! He's gone. Death has nothing to do with going away. The sun sets and

the moon sets, but they're not gone.

Death is a coming together. The tomb

looks like a prison, but it's really

release into union. The human seed goes

down in the ground like a bucket into

the well where Joseph is. It grows and

comes up full of some unimagined beauty.

Your mouth closes here, and immediately

opens with a shout of joy there.

---------------------------------

One who does what the Friend wants done

will never need a friend.

There's a bankruptcy that's pure gain.

The moon stays bright when it

doesn't avoid the night.

A rose's rarest essence

lives in the thorn.

----------------------------------

Childhood, youth, and maturity,

and now old age.

Every guest agrees to stay

three days, no more.

Master, you told me to

remind you. Time to go.

-----------------------------------

The angel of death arrives,

and I spring joyfully up.

No one knows what comes over me

when I and that messenger speak!

-------------------------------------

When you come back inside my chest no matter how far I've wandered off,

I look around and see the way.

At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come then, I'll sit up and sing.

--------------------------------------

Last night things flowed between us

that cannot now be said or written.

Only as I'm being carried out

and down the road, as the folds of my shroud open in the wind,

will anyone be able to read, as on

the petal-pages of a turning bud,

what passed through us last night.

-------------------------------------

I placed one foot on the wide plain

of death, and some grand

immensity sounded on the emptiness.

I have felt nothing ever

like the wild wonder of that moment.

Longing is the core of mystery.

Longing itself brings the cure.

The only rule is, Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,

and what you want to happen

in time, sacrificed.”

― Rumi,

The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems

art: 

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me,i and my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

A Color of the Sky

BY TONY HOAGLAND (1953-2018, RIP)