I've come up with a desert theme somehow.
It's not on purpose.
I was infected earlier today by the little spindle
of prickly pear that went into my leg.
I forgot everything.
How did this happen?
How did such a thing happen to me?
"Dear Rumi."
"You have forgotten the other life
in which Shams-e-Tabriz threw your books into the fountain.
And the ink, finally unrecognizable,
reached for you with dissipating lust.
Once, I went up the mountain at daybreak,
and still I met pilgrims coming down
who had woken for the journey earlier.
In the tomb of not-Shams, I prayed
and prayed to be not found.
Am I the sun inside me?
Shams will walk out the back door and never return.
And you, you will go mad and spend years looking for him.
One day in the marketplace, estranged and weeping,
you will understand the farthest mosque is the one within,
and that the sun in the sky is not the one you orbit around,
nor the one who went out the back door and never returned.
Somewhere in the world now, every minute, a sun
is dropping over the horizon into yesterday.
At the fountain in the village square,
the books are still sinking, bereft of your hands.
Even the mountains are bending down to try to save them.
Dear Shams-e-Tabriz, I do not mourn.
You spindle me, sun-thorn, to the sky."