You have said what you are.
I am what I am.
Your actions in my head,
my head here in my hands
with something circling inside.
I have no name
for what circles
so perfectly.

 Rumi

In absence, aloe wood burns fragrant.
The love we feel is smoke from that.
Existence gets painted with non-existence,
it's source, the fire behind a screen.
Smoke born of this fire hides the fire!
Pass through the smoke.  Soul, a moving
river: body, the riverbed.  Soul can
break the circle of fate and habit.
Take hold of the hand of absence and let
it draw you through the Pleiades,
giving up wet and dry, hot and cold.
You become a confidant of Shams Tabriz.
You see clearly the glory of nothing
and stand, inexplicably, there.
Rumi

The connection to the Friend
is secret and very fragile.
The image of that friendship
is in how you love, the grace
and delicacy, the subtle talking
together, in full prostration,
outside of time.  When you're
there, remember the fierce
courtesy of the one with you.
Rumi

For the grace of presence, be grateful.
Touch the cloth of the robe,
but do not pull it toward you,
or like an arrow it will leave the bow.
Images.  Presence plays with form,
fleeing and hiding as the sky does in water,
now one place, now nowhere.
Imagination cannot contain the absolute.
These poems are elusive
because the presence is.
I love the rose that is not  a rose,
but the second I try to speak it, any name
for God becomes so-and-so, and vanishes.
What you thought to draw lifts off the paper,
as what you love slips from your heart.
Rumi