can I share a Rumi with you?

I've been trying to get into poetry lately. I think its a very brilliant thing, that poetry stuff. You take this profound truth a speak it in a creative way. It's kind of like finding buried treasure, digging it up then putting it back in the ground again and giving someone a general map of it's location. Maybe they find the treasure you buried or maybe they find their own, but either way they use your map to get there. Anyway, I don't really know anything about poetry save the little I remember from high school English and Shel Silverstein's, but I got a few books from the library and my aunt gave me some too. One was a collection of Rumi's poems which of course are timeless and fantastic and another was about how to write poetry. These are some of Rumi's:
*****

"Someone who goes with half a loaf of bread
to a small place that fits like a nest around him,
someone who wants no more, who's not himself
longed for by anyone else,

He is a letter to everyone. You open it.
It says, Live"

*****


My Worst Habit

"My worst habit is I get so tired of winter
I become a torture to those I'm with.

If you're not here, nothing grows.
I lack clarity. My words
tangle and knot up.

How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.
How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.

When water gets caught in the habitual whirlpools,
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean. There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can't hope.

The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back to you."

*****

Enough Words?

"How does part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?

Don't try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire!
Don't wash a wound with blood!

No matter how fast you run,
your shadow keeps up.
Sometimes it's in front!

Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
You boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there's no fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree, feathers and wings sprout
on you, be quieter than a dove.
Don't open your mouth for even a coooooooo.

When a frog slips into the water, the snake
cannot get it. The frog climbs back out
and croaks, and the snake moves toward him again.

Even if the frog learned to hiss, still the snake
would hear through the hiss the information
he needed, the frog voice underneath.

But if the frog could be completely silent,
the snake would go back to sleeping,
and the frog could reach the barley.

The soul lives there in silent breath.

And that grain of barley is such that,
when you put it in the ground,
it grows.
Are these enough words,
or shall I squeeze more juice from this?
Who am I, my friend?"



So good. So good. I'm going to try to write one poem a day. You should write one too, and leave it as a comment!! or, you know, don't.