When you’re a book author, a journalist, or a person who writes occasionally, who ‘goes out to see what you can see….’ we’re gifted to often meet completely odd souls… who out-eccentric even us. Sometimes, you’re lucky to make friends of strangers. I’ve one such friend I met in an odd way. Since then, he sends me letters and poems every day. I wanted you to see this too, for receiving a poem that matters, or a one liner that lifts us back into right mind again, is a treasure of any friendship. Today my friend sent me this beauty. (More about my unusual friend, the poet, and the picture of the red house in a moment….)

A Man Talking To His House

I say that no one in this caravan is awake
and that while you sleep, a thief is stealing

the signs and symbols of what you thought
was your life. Now you’re angry with me for

telling you this! Pay attention to those who
hurt your feelings telling you the truth.

Giving and absorbing compliments is like
trying to paint on water, that insubstantial.

Here is how a man once talked with his house,
“Please, if you’re ever about to collapse,

let me know.” One night without a word the
house fell. “What happened to our agreement?”

The house answered, “Day and night I’ve been
telling you with cracks and broken boards and

holes appearing like mouths opening. But you
kept patching and filling those with mud, so

proud of your stopgap masonry. You didn’t
listen.” This house is your body always

saying, I’m leaving; I’m going soon. Don’t
hide from one who knows the secret. Drink

the wine of turning toward God. Don’t examine
your urine. Examine instead how you praise,

what you wish for, this longing we’ve been
given. Fall turns pale yellow light wanting

spring and spring arrives! Trees blossom.
Come to the orchard and see what comes to

you, a silent conversation with your soul.

– Jal’l ad-Din Mu’ammad Balkh –
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CODA
The Poet: – JJal’l ad-Din Mu’ammad Balkh – is also known as Rumi, the poet who lived in Persia (now Iran) from 1207 to 1273. Like many mystics from any religion (He was a Sufi, the mystical arm of the Muslim religion), he was a clear thinker, taking studies that made him a jurist. The Persian poets most known in the West, which include Mirabai and Kabir, are treasured for their common sense and their way of speaking of more than one world, but in down to earth ways. This piece was translated by another friend, Coleman Barks. The poem speaks in ‘handyman’s terms’ about taking care of the body pre-emptively for those who are graced to have the wherewithall, and not to spend too much time worrying the cultural bones til one makes oneself ill. For instance, this week, there was a medical research report that noted, via watching the hearts of people who were often angry, irritable, that this daily attitude chronically causes the arteries to the heart to contract and narrow, decreasing blood flow, oxygen, and thus ‘attacking’ the heart over and over. There’s much to be outraged about in life, this is true, but also there are also reasons to have practices, I think, to mediate the constant roil… for the sake of ‘the one who serves blindly and without pay,’ that is, the blessed body.

The stranger-turned-friend who sent this poem to me today is named Bruce Moody and he is now in his seventies. I know him across time in ways that matter, and do not know him at all in the ways that dont. We have never met face to face. We met when I was asked to read a book he had written to see if I would like to endorse it. I’m a slow reader because of various handicaps, and feel frail to promise to read books with a time-limit attached. But, I read his, and I wept my way through the entire book. It was about Bruce’s years as a homeless man, wandering and begging for money from strangers. I wept because no matter who said what to him, no matter how crass, how cruel, how mean, how downright assaultive, no matter how kind, how going out of their ways, no matter how sweet others were to him… he kept asking out loud that they all be blessed. His book, Will Work for Food or $, here.

The red house: is actually an artist’s installation, and is painted red inside and out, floor to ceiling, stoop to roof. “About a month or so ago, however, there suddenly appeared a bright red house on Craggy Island: a scarlet house, a Monopoly-Hotel-red house. At first I guessed that it might be some kind of tourist-information station, but, a couple of weeks ago I happened to see a short article about it in a local free-sheet which explained that it was, in fact, a work of art…”

work of art… like you. Like all of us, each in their own absolutely one-of-a-kind way.