Only Breath

Daphne and I sit many mornings and read Rumi to each other. This is today's reading. I thought it was particularly wonderful. Very fond of Rumi and remember attending a Coleman Barks lecture many years ago in North Carolina and meeting him. He read his poem, "How to Curse an Okra Seed". Someday I will find that.
From “A Year With Rumi” pg. 371
Reading for November 27th
by Coleman Barks

Only Breath

Ah, true believers, what can I say?
I no longer know who I am.
               Not Christian or Jew or Muslim
               Not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen
               I am not from the East or the West,
               not out of the ocean or up from ground.
               Not natural or ethereal, not composed
               of elements at all. I do not exist.

               I am not from China or India, not
               from the town of Bulgar on the Volga
               nor remote Arabian Saqsin. Not
               from either Iraq, between the rivers,
               or in western Persia. Not an entity
               in the world or the next. I did not
               descend from Adam and Eve or an origin
               story. My place is the 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.