It is the 19th day of  NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo.  New day, new challenge.  This one is to write a poem of any kind with any perspective pertinent to a ‘creation’ story.  Many who know me would assume that I would ease over to Genesis and do something based on that.  Instead?  I have selected to try to create a poem based on the influence of Rumi on both modern poets and poetry itself.

Garden Into Gateway
by Michael Romani

I hesitate, not wanting to sound too suspicious
But I often avoid things considered auspicious
This might partially account for my intemperance
Lived out fully, loudly; in youthful exuberance
Charging wildly across the desert's sands
Preferring human experience to empty metaphors
Yet, still I have made time to enjoy the caravan
Always certain that there was so much more

I guess this is where I might confess and mention
That I am here for a poet's auspicious commemoration
And that as I read the blue and gold calligraphy
That the poet has brought a lot to you and to me
This is what brings me to his turquoise tiled shrine
I am here to honor this whisperer of the divine
Meditating on a gold embroidered, black velvet tombStranger
That now contains the dreamer like a new sort of womb

I say a womb because out of it, so many have been born
Words for lovers of God and of love, happy and forlorn
Spun inside a zekr's mad sort of dazzling whirling
With so many hopes and dreams sent on their way swirling
Tan felt tombstone hats accompanied by flute and drum
All playing parts of sacred hearts, greater than their sum
Like white flowers blossoming into a mystic meditation
Caught up and codified into this dance of dedication

I take you to the bus stop on Konya's boulevard
While we watch the night pass and some take it really hard
My pretense at elegance makes you laugh and me smile
As we explore paths that are beautifully not our style
Calling us to the other side, danced to with tambourine
And now it becomes certain, at last knowing what he means
Urgent poetry calls to me on this bleak December day
The turreted walls of Konya fall- becoming only a gate way

...The poet has left just as he arrived, a stranger -
With no one truly understanding him....

(c) April 19, 2017 Michael Romani