Brimming Over with Wild

Last night from somewhere out there during the liminal time between midnight and dawn came the coyotes’ song, brimming over with wild. Lonely and still tantalizing. Reminding me of the haunting call of loons across Sebago Lake, echoing from almost thirty years ago. These callings harmonized then and still do with the resonant voice of Coleman Barks, reciting Rumi in the lodge, accompanied by sitar and tabla. Which lines? I can almost hear him answer, “It doesn’t matter.” "Try these," and I read from the ones he chose for September 16: 

“… Too often we put saddlebags on Jesus,

and let the donkey run loose in the pasture.

Do not make the body do what the spirit does best,

and don’t put a big load on the spirit

that the body could carry easily.

A Year with Rumi, p. 294.

A few lines later in Book V of Rumi’s Mathnawi, (R.A. Nicholson, The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi, Vol V & VI, p. 68) we’re told to discern between body and spirit “with the eye of the heart.” From there comes the voice of God, in the song of the wild and in the spiritual verse.