What will our children do in the morning if they do not see us fly?
—Rumi, “The Way Wings Should,” translated by Daniel Ladinsky
Dear Rumi,
You tell me to fly, to cartwheel
around the sky, to soar, to reel,
to spiral in the wind. But
there is a nest and two hungry mouths
and two bodies not yet fully feathered.
It’s easy enough for you to advise
I should let my heart play,
as you say, “the way
wings should.” You
probably had someone else
at your nest to care for your
young while you unfurled
your wings and wheeled with Shams
and felt the joy of rising.
Perhaps I am too literal.
Perhaps you mean later in life.
Perhaps you mean bit by bit.
Perhaps you mean fly in this moment,
wherever I am. Perhaps you mean
I have put too much of a cage
on the word “should,”
have limited notions
of what flying looks like.
I thought I knew what wings
should do. But maybe this letting
go of what I thought I needed,
perhaps this, too, is flight.
Baby flaps, Rosemerry. Baby flaps. And lookit, already your thoughts-to-words are lifting us upward—“us” including yourself, of course. You _are_ taking flight? You see it, right?
“Fly on, Little Wing.” -Jimi Hendrix
I like how after the “but” shapes of the images of birds appear, the young not fully feathered, the imagination flitting so quickly to the idea of birds talking back to Rumi.
One suggestion: all those “perhaps” might be clipped if you made them into questions:
Am I too literal?
Do you mean later in life? etc. Maybe leave the last one…? Perhaps?
Perhaps you’re right! r
So beautiful. This one really speaks to me!
Thanks for sharing. I’m off in search of my wings…
Claudia
“You probably had someone else at your nest to care for your young while you unfurled your wings and wheeled with Shams…” Yes!! I have a poem that I started a while back about what it would be like to be Rumi’s wife, and I think she was maybe more than a little resentful that he got to go off whirling all the time while she kept both feet on the ground and maintained the practical end of things 🙂