Bamboo & the Sound of Love

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Guest Post by Alea Kent

I am a Rumi fan, but have only read his shorter works, having never tackled one of his best known poems, “The Reed.” So I decided to write a poem as if I did know what The Reed was about and this is the result. 

But what is interesting is that “Bamboo” was written years before our home burned in an urban wildfire. It is as if I was being given strength to understand what that experience was all about before it happened and know that I, too, would become the flute. 

Bamboo

Ripped and torn
From the roots of the only home I have known 
and carried screaming and crying, 
by beings who neither heard my tears 
nor cared for my loss. I am left to harden,
Losing the juices that
Sustained and kept me alive.

Then a rough sharpness,
Cuts and hacks at me, 
Making me into something else,
Some other thing.
And then I am burned, here and there,
Charred and tender and aching
In the agony of what has been taken from me.

At last, I am given over to other hands.
A breath blows a gentle note through me,
Wondrous and pure.

Ah, I have gone through all this
to become the flute through which 
God sends Its sound
To all creation.

And oh, I would go through it all again.
To be held in the gentle hands of God,
To have Its breath blow through me,
And to become the sound of love 
Carried throughout the Universe.

Alea Kent

Alea is a spiritual being first and foremost and also a retired psychotherapist, now using Body Code and Emotion Code to heal people on all levels.  She can be reached at [email protected] or by phone at 541-897-4402