Pilgrimage of poems: A trace of the traceless

To tell you the truth, every poem I’ve read related to Easter makes me want to hurl. Well, except for Yeats’s “Easter 1916”. But I gave that one to you last year for National Poetry Month, so it’s off-limits this time around.

So let’s put the specific day aside and just think about…humanity. I’m not sure there’s a better take on the basics than “Only Breath”, by the Persian poet/Sufi mystic known just as Rumi.

“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 in 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.