The Reed in the Desert Wind

Listen—
I was cut from a reed-bed long ago,
and since that severing I have not ceased
to sing of the wound.

Across plains where the sun breaks open like pomegranate flesh,
through cities bright with bargaining tongues,
through gardens heavy with jasmine dusk,
I carried the ache of a homeland
no map could show.

I rested among companions of the road,
shared bread, shared stories,
laughed beneath lantern-light—
yet even in laughter something within me leaned
toward a farther music.

They told me, Remain.
Build your tent here.
Let the days fold gently one into another.
And many did so,
and their lives were good.

But the wind had written a different script
along the marrow of my bones.

It said:
What you defend as yourself
is only a clay cup shaped by habit.
Break it.
Let the wine spill.
Only then will you taste what it holds.

So I entered the desert of bewilderment
where names fall from the tongue
like loosened beads from a torn rosary.
There, pride cracked like dry earth.
There, the self I polished so carefully
was ground to dust beneath Love’s turning sky.

I saw moths hurl themselves into candle-flame
and understood at last:
they were not seeking death
but brightness.

I heard the tale of the birds
who crossed seven valleys in search of a king—
each feather singed by longing—
only to find, in the last mirror of light,
that the Sovereign they sought
was the burning of their own reflection.

O Friend,
what terror and sweetness dwell in this secret:
that to endure, one must vanish;
that to be gathered, one must scatter.

Some keep to the orchard wall,
content with fruit that ripens in season.
Blessed are they.

But some are seized by a thirst
no well can quiet.
It rises at night like a hidden spring,
a Zamzam beneath the ribs,
calling them to circle an unseen center
until every idol of certainty falls.

I have been ash carried by wind.
I have been spark leaping toward sky.
Neither was mine to command.

What remains when both are gone
is a silence vast and tender,
a widening in which the Beloved whispers,
You were never other than this.

There are a thousand paths spoken of in books,
a thousand disciplines, a thousand vows.
Yet the true way is a narrowing
through which only sincerity may pass.
It is the step you take
when no one applauds,
when no promise is given
but the nearness of the Real.

Now I move as a reed hollowed by loss,
breath passing through me that is not my own.
Call me dust.
Call me flame.
Call me nothing at all.

In this sweet annihilation
I have found a life
wider than horizon,
clearer than dawn prayer,
and intimate as the pulse
that speaks the name
of The Beloved
without syllable.