By Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (translated by Coleman Barks)

I start out on this road, call it love or emptiness, I only know what’s not here.

Resentment seeds, backscratching greed, worrying about outcome, fear of people.

When a bird gets free, it does not go for remnants left on the bottom of the cage.

Close by, I’m rain. Far off, a cloud of fire. I seem restless, but I am deeply at ease.

Branches tremble. The roots are still. I am a universe in a handful of dirt, whole when totally demolished.

Talk about choices does not apply to me. While intelligence considers options, I am somewhere lost in the wind.