Nine levels
"Your body's height, six feet or so, but your soul rises
through nine levels of sky." Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks.
1. Crouched on the floor, cold. We look up
and see the brand-new stars.
2. The air bubbles with starlight.
Spring up! Shout! Laugh!
3. Chantcrowd surroundcloud raincloud. Spring up!
Weep for one day. Forget.
4. Feet still chained by cables, cords and cash,
I wash my broken eyes in rays and rains. Wait.
5. I never knew we were so many all-singing angels.
6. Observing the unedited stars
we sigh to their starfire.
7. Bouncing through the window,
we throw away our masks.
8. In the surge of sudden gravity,
in the crush of sun and planet,
in the arc of eyes of angels,
take this echo.
Touch [th]is echo.
9. Melted, spread and remade
as plain space and as the rainbow.
Wait.
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Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
Poems at Proximity:
http://www.proximity.webhop.net
The choice is between nonviolence and nonexistence.
Martin Luther King Jr.
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