Don’t Go to Sleep This Night

04 Jan 2012 1 Comment

by Eva the Dragon in Food for the Soul - Poetry, Where the Corn Grows - Iowa Tags: , , , , ,

August Full Moon over Iowa Corn Fields, 2011

Don’t Go to Sleep This Night

don’t go to sleep
this night
one night is worth
a hundred thousand souls

the night is generous
it can give you
a gift of the full moon
it can bless your soul
with endless treasure

every night when you feel
the world is unjust
never ending grace
descends from the sky
to soothe your souls

the night is not crowded like the day
the night is filled with eternal love
take this night
tight in your arms
as you hold a sweetheart

remember the water of life
is in the dark caverns
don’t be like a big fish
stopping the life’s flow
by standing in the mouth of a creek

during a night
the blessed prophet
broke all the idols and
God remained alone
to give equally to all
an endless love.

                              Translated by Nader Khalili
                              Rumi, Fountain of Fire

A Bahraini friend sent this poem to me today.


On Poets, Chinook Salmon and Dahlias

19 Dec 2011 1 Comment

by Eva the Dragon in Food for the Soul - Poetry, Stories from Far Away Lands - Travel, Where the Corn Grows - Iowa Tags: , , , , ,

Returning by sea to Seattle. Mount Ranier 87km from Seattle is seen in the background.

Christopher Merrill read from his poem Pike Place Market Variations the night he visited Bahrain.

His contemporary poem captured our visit to the Pike Place Market in Seattle.   With his permission I used his words to describe my memories.

"O savor of salt and salmon--the holy and nomadic Chinook neatly filleted in ice; The King and Coho caught by a troller..."

"The fishmonger, fattened on fried clams and beer batter, brandishes his knife at the cat on the counter."

"A woman in culottes buys ferns and freesias at the flower shop,..."

"..Then roams around the crowded block, reading menus, a mark for the moneyed and the saved."

"Aboard the listing Walla Walla, the ferry stalled in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, nervous passengers scan the deep for whales, and the crew applauds the antics of the gulls and grebes."

"A drunken couple waltzes up the block, believing their good luck will never change. The sign above them--MEET THE PRODUCER--reels in the first stars."

Mr. Merrill said “how I love, and miss, Seattle.”

Quotes from Pike Place Market Variations published in Christopher Merrill’s book Watch Fire.

Seeds Like These

30 Nov 2011 Leave a comment

by Eva the Dragon in Food for the Soul - Poetry, Healing - Self and the Earth, Where the Corn Grows - Iowa Tags: , , , , , , ,

Lutheran Church near Stratford Iowa

In Cell and Cloister, in monastery and synagogue:

Some fear hell and others dream of Paradise.

But no man who really knows the secrets of his God

Has planted seeds like this within his heart.

Omar Khayyam, The Way of the Sufi pg 59.

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