Calms my mind
Like a deep breath
Frees my heart
Like a lover’s kiss
Spirit’s favourite playground
Frees my heart
Like a lover’s kiss
Spirit’s favourite playground
Then notice the shapes
How each tile had to be cut
Individually
By hand
Just so
Or it would not fit
The precision
It’s astonishing
I draw back a little
And see the larger forms
Shaped by the small tiles
The lines weaving their way
Through the forms
Linking one to another
Delineating them
Then notice the star
In the lower left corner
Or is it a sphere?
How do you create the sense
Of a soft round orb
With nothing but straight lines
And hard edges?
But neither my eye
Nor my mind
Can linger there long
Follow the trail
Walk the maze
A lazy, meandering drive
Through rolling country
Up to the chains
All interlocked
Each link with its own form
Peanuts and hearts
Circles and infinity
Then the letters
Is there any written language
So beautiful as Arabic
In the hands of an artisan
Filigree relief in plaster
Harmonious
With the sweeping strokes
I understand the grace of Rumi
With such elegant script
As a medium
And wonder at what beauty
The translated words
Might speak to me
I step back
Take in the wider view
Such conscious beauty here
But I cannot hold all of it
Not in my mind
Not all at once
The lines and shapes
The forms and individual tiles
The curling words
All of it intertwined
In space and history and culture
A tapestry of ceramic and plaster and time
A small rectangle of wall
Is all so much larger
And beautiful
Than my ability to hold it all
In consciousness
So I open my heart
Let my spirit become my senses
Let experience touch my being
And there it is
All of it
Not contained by me
By my mind
Or my heart
Or my spirit
But I contained in it
It is not the mosaic
Through which the white lines flow
But myself
And so become I
Part of the mosaic
And the mosaic is me
As suddenly as it came
The awareness passes
Though my memory of it
Remains
All such epiphanies
Great or small
Prove to be
Both ephemeral
And eternal
I stand there
Manifest again
Looking upon a mosaic
On a wall
In a fabulous structure
Built centuries ago
Occupied by many empires since
A mosaic of existence itself
And I wonder
If all along
That was the message intended
By artists and artisans
Who designed and created
One small mosaic on a wall
In the Alhambra
Life
Existence itself
Is a mosaic
Moments
Joyful and Solemn
Solitary and frolicsome
Beaches
Body and nature intersect
Spirit and being mingle
And so I rise
In heart and soul
Astride the vision
Of an elevated spirit
After so many bricks
And so much mortar
I am beginning to understand
Which is the stronger gesture
Which offers the greatest protection
A God
In which I had no
Faith
Prayers and rites
In which I found no
Substance
Riding the
Pendulum’s
Swing
Content there
With logic and
Fact
I explored the bounds
Of science and
Philosophy
Discovering
A realm well beyond
Knowledge
Now I watch my waitress
And I wonder if she is also processing
The traumas of a dimly remembered past
While serving another table’s drink orders
I wonder if the waitress knows
That in the every day of just going along
Her mind, and her heart, and her spirit
Process the hard work that is so upsetting
“You did not go crazy”
“You did not die”
“You lived and never let go of the light
Even when you were plunged into the darkness”
“And all you learned to cope
With the trauma so many years ago
Keeps you alive now
While you heal”
But that is plenty bright enough