So that's a little bit of the disappearance of Seth.
Now the sequel to "Dear Rumi."
So when I wrote "Dear Rumi," I was
thinking about spiritual absence,
and I was satisfied for a moment or two,
but then I realized that even when
you come to spiritual terms with the loss of a person,
you still miss that person.
And so it's a little unfair to dress it up.
So I wanted to try again.
So here's the poem called "Dear Shams."
Shams, of course, his name means sun.
In Arabic, that word shams means sun.
"Dear Shams."
There is no answer to winter.
Sun sets over water falling so quickly.
You have not been lost.
Listening for silence-- where and where did you go.
Twelve-stringed music rejoin me.
In the sun-year, I swelled long shadows.
In the moon-year, the valley folded itself up.
You are the beloved I would not love.
At the fountain, witless, and still--
a stream pours over rocks making music.
Could the water rush over me?
Could you rush over me?
The sun drops so quickly into its banishment.
Could I please, now, forget to breathe, and drown?
Will the ocean rejoin me?
You have not been lost.
Can I be reborn as a guitar, and you reborn as music
to hum inside me?
One day, you stopped looking at me,
and I knew the last note was lingering
in the box of my body.
You did not vanish in the marketplace.
I still imagine you in me as breath--
broken in thirds, corded to sound.
I took your name when the sun came up-- sun of winter, sun
windless and wistful.
Come down across the water.
Undone sun give me the drunk go-ahead.
Last time, I searched for you.
This time, I became wooden and resonant.
Last time, I raved without senses.
This time, my angel, my paper maker,
pluck me, O pluck me, and hum.