…is a Poem by Hafiz.

Admit something.

Everyone you see, you say to them,
“Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud:
Otherwise,
Someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this,
This great pull to connect.

Why not become the one
Who lives with a full moon in each eye
That is always saying,

With that sweet moon
Language

What every other eye in this world
Is dying to
Hear?

Because underneath every moment of anger, or insecurity, or thinking of what could have or should have been different, there’s a softness.

It’s sad and we’re usually too scared to touch it—but if I can hang out in the heartbreak, there’s a tenderness and I sink into it and underneath that is something else. It’s a spark of creativity.

It’s like walking alone on a hot night and noticing the people who pass by on the sidewalk, or looking through apartment windows to imagine the kind of lives contained inside.

The lightning bugs in the park at dusk: how they fizzle and pop in the bushes while the sky grows dim.

Like the sound of the ocean when no one else is on the beach, or the way a thunderstorm rolls across the horizon and hits suddenly with a curtain of rain. The feeling of words before they come onto the keyboard or page.

Curiosity.

Moments when the world is so rich and I’m so absorbed in it that I’m not afraid of anything.

Because really, that’s all any of us want anyway.

~

Hafiz poems and excerpts are from Daniel Ladinsky’s  Penguin publications The Gift, Poems by Hafiz © copyright 1999, and I Heard God Laughing, Poems of Hope and Joy © copyright 1996 & 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.

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Ed: Bryonie Wise / Image: Flickr/Pierre Willemin