You're The Diver's Clothes
Lying Empty on the Beach

2000, ink and acrylic on paper in single panel screen

26.5 x 37 inches

You're sitting here with us, but you're also out walking
in a field at dawn. You are yourself
the animal we hunt when you come with us on the hunt.

You're in your body like a plant is solid in the ground,
yet you're wind. You're the diver's clothes
lying empty on the beach. You're the fish.

In the ocean are many bright strands
and many dark strands like veins that are seen
when a wing is lifted up.

You're hidden self is blood in those, those veins
that are lute strings that make ocean music,
not the sad edge of surf, but the sound of no shore.

—Rumi

from The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Bark, HarperCollins 1995