I was happy and surprised when Coleman Barks published a collection of entries in Bahauddin's journal, called THE DROWNED BOOK. Bahauddin was Rumi's father, a Muslim religious leader and mystic, and he would sometimes write as if he spoke and heard directly to and from God. As I got deeper into the beauty of Yellowstone--I worked there for a little over a year--I got a taste of that too. Sometimes the messages (who's speaking, which one is listening, why state the obvious and known?) all felt jumbled together but intense and clear if a little hard to understand. The mental-feeling divisions between objectivity and subjectivity begin to break down in some ways. I guess this poem is the closest I come to a pan-theistic feeling. I don't really have a good explanation for feeling ancient, but I have the feeling!
The lives we live
are largely metaphors
for what we were.
Our bodies dream
of ancient savannahs,
primal forests,
mountains that barely
still exist.
Our spirits swim in an ocean
that birthed life itself,
fly through a heavenly dome
which has no bounds.
Is it any wonder then
I look for your eyes
in my dreams,
I tell your story whether anyone
listens or not?
I search this earth,
knowing where you are.
How long has it been
since I asked for a story,
since you began
unravelling
this unimaginable wonder?
Copyright 2007 Todd Mertz