Sometimes one of life’s great joys is simply plucking a long-abandoned book off one’s own shelves and getting lost in its magic. Found on my poetry shelf The Subject Tonight Is Love, 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky and settled into a bench at the waterfront. A favorite:
All The Hemispheres
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
