the patience of the Guest

How does this Feast
always turn
annihilation into
origin? The patience
of the Guest dances
in that eddy of love. Forever
new, the friendship
between
unsayableness and
music trembles like
the skin of a pond,
entered.
-----©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

Your quiet nowhere
storms my emptied
world like a hawk,
a helpless lover
shining and nameless
in the tender
solitude of
this forest's night.
No other
moment has
this face's heart;
no other
fire loves what
it burns so
sweetly.

©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

prayer poem before coffee

The world's empty garden
opens to me, a
prayer that wants to
bring me the
living vein of
love I have
longed to breathe
every morning.
Its season is this
prayer's only
moment, a
hatching, a light,
an everything begging
for surrender.

©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

that secret commotion

The unfailing laughter
your compassionate fire speaks
enters the wilderness of rust
that my little soul has built, teaching
me the blossoming
I pray for, showing
me how to want
that secret commotion
that leads to holy stillness.

©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

some knowledge

Some knowledge
becomes fuel.
The ordinary secrets
of November's
nowhere burn into the
sweet, laughing vernacular
I learn when no
one else
is looking.

----©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

inside

Last night my teacher taught me the lesson of poverty,
having nothing and wanting nothing.

I am a naked man standing inside a mine of rubies,
clothed in red silk.

I absorb the shining and now I see the ocean,
billions of simultaneous motions moving in me.

A circle of lovely, quiet people
becomes the ring on my finger.

Then wind, and the thunder of rain on the way.
I have such a teacher.
---Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks