"I see my beauty in you"
Jelaluddin Rumi



So it was here all the time:
that untamed happiness that
keeps getting lost under heavy
cushions of daylight or in
mysterious corners of the
hundred different things
that have to be done before noon—
but here it is again.

This time it showed up in that
place within your arms where
I can hear every thought you’re
thinking about me,
where it sounds like
oceansong, calling me to swim
deeper and deeper into
the glittering heart
where I was born.

Other times it shows up in
some feathery little moment, those
times when we jump out of
our skin upon glancing at the
aftermath of winter:
looted trees scaled down to
nothing by the battle,
yet here they are, backlit by
fragments of a universe in
full bloom—
you could pick it and smell
something like living rubies or
long-buried summers and all the
dainty, forbidden wonders growing
outside the house of your childhood,

But usually I find it in some
microscopic moment I hardly knew
existed, or those times when I
forget I live an ordinary life,
when I notice a small light,
soft as the mind’s dance in the
twilight of awakening,
startling as the spicy blossoms
that grow on the tips of
frozen forests.

And I recognize this light,
I know it well.
I’ve seen it at the moment of my
children’s birth,
and in those times when I truly
believe there is no death,
and I’ve seen it
float across your eyes,
and brush against your face,
and remind me what I’m doing here,
what my soul has been up to.
I’ve seen it,
burning, spirit-soaked and
laughing,
everywhere in you.

© Patricia Joan Jones

Published in Ancient Heart Magazine