Words Fly Up

All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there. This drunkenness began in some other tavern. When I get back around to that place, I'll be completely sober.  Meanwhile, I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary. The day is coming when I fly off, but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice? Who says words with my mouth? Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home. This poetry, I never know what I'm going to say. I don't plan it. When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

Rumi

To be in any form, what is that? (Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back     thither,) If nothing lay more develop'd the quahaug in its callous shell     were enough.

Mine is no callous shell, I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop, They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.

I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy, To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I     can stand.

Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Look, and it can't be seen. Listen, and it can't be heard. Reach, and it can't be grasped. Above, it isn't bright. Below, it isn't dark. Seamless, unnamable, it returns to the realm of nothing. Form that includes all forms, image without an image, subtle, beyond all conception. Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. You can't know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom.

Abenaki, Western; Achumawi; Apache, Kiowa; Arikara; Chetco; Chinook; Chinook Wawa; Coeur d’Alene; Cowlitz; Gros Ventre; Haida, Northern; Han; Hawaii Sign Language; Holikachuk; Hupa; Kalispel-Pend d’Oreille; Kawaiisu; Luiseno; Lushootseed; Maidu, Northeast; Maidu, Northwest: Mandan; Miwok, Centeral Sierra; Miwok, Lake; Miwok, Southern Sierra; Mokilese; Natchez; Nomlaki; Ochlone, Southern; Onondaga; Osage; Patwin; Pawnee; Pomo, Central: Pomo, Eastern;  Pomo, Northern; Pomo, Southeastern; Pomo, Southern; Quapaw; Salish, Straits; Skagit; Snohomish; Spokane; Tolowa; Tubatulabal; Tuscarora; Wappo; Wasco-Wishram; Washo; Wichita; Yakama; Yuchi; Yurok

“when a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world. ”