The cloud had her gilt edges,
all lit by sun.
These shimmery thin tendrils
through which the light shone.
While the rest of her, subdued
in modest grey,
even if she sought to,
would not have drawn the eye.
Not in the same way
as her edges,
all soaring and silver rimmed,
all insubstantial and sheer
as muslin,
set adrift in the evening sky.
That today, I still think of her
one day on –
in the way an artist might
who did not have his camera or a brush,
but can recall
at the closing of his eyes
each shape forming
her substance, each measure of light.
Or, a philosopher perhaps,
who drives a way further on
and thinks to himself
of Rumi,
how the light enters directly
through the wound.
How it’s at the edges
where we are our most frail,
most vulnerable,
that the Beloved finds an entry point.
And our own beauty, an outlet.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
July 2021
“I said: what about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road.
I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning.
I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?
I said: Pain and sorrow.
He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi
Living Tree Poetry 