Only Breath

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,
​Buddhist, sufi, or zen.  Not any religion

or cultural system.  I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal,
not composed of elements at all.  I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story.  My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless.  Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

- Rumi.  Translated by Coleman Barks in, 'The Essential Rumi.'

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