Loose Ghazal for Rumi

Look at you—born of halves and fulls,

Born of earth into stalled world.

Have you forgotten the early months of silence?

Or does that silence sit with you at each table?

You’re already looking at me, somehow knowing,

Somehow wisdom in fresh eyes showing.

Somehow you fill your name already,

Cast in white marble by two gentle breaths.

How different we look—you and I,

More darkness in my brow than in your entirety.

You may yet grow to resemble your mother more than mine

But for now just these words tether us together to our old home.

Home is a name spoken well,

By stranger or grandfather—it is a peculiar, potent spell.

What a beautiful and strange home you have been gifted,

Blonde and blue-eyed Sufi, upright and serious and oblivious.

Promise me—let’s run when you can run and talk when words you have mastered,

Let’s sit cross-legged at home and laugh at our crooked little fingers.

Promise me—don’t compromise your name,

This is how you lose sight of the mountains, of the buffalos.

Promise me—don’t compromise your name,

This is how you lose the ancestral breath,

This is how you lose home.