“The Drop”

Guest Post by Riley Carson

Rumi was a renowned Sufi scholar, mystic, and poet (1207-1273) . His writings weave a mystic’s viewpoint with scenes from daily life into thought-provoking (sometimes thought stopping) ways. My poem was inspired by the following passage by Rumi, which captures a mind-bending viewpoint, and in a way that relates to some of my own mystical adventures. Rumi wrote: “You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop!” 

Rumi often used these kinds of metaphor inversions, in which the container (the ocean in this case) becomes the contained (the drop), and the contained becomes the container. Mystics speak from the viewpoint of the soul, observing life from outside the blinders of space and time. I believe they are being more than just poetic; They literally experience such radical shifts of consciousness directly. 

While writing my poem about The Drop, I flashed back to a childhood memory. I was about 10 or 11 years old, an average kid without a philosophical thought in my head, or a mystical experience of any kind. I was sitting in the backyard on a sunny day. I glanced at my fingers, and the thought came to me: “What if there are whole worlds inside my little finger”? The thought caught me by surprise, and I wondered where it came from. But it stuck vividly in my memory.

The Drop

I saw the ocean in a Drop,
and knew all time was Now.
I felt my mind come to full stop,
it couldn’t cope somehow.
In The Drop a universe contained,
A cosmic dance with mysteries unchained.
In that fleeting moment time lost its grip,
As The Drop whispered tales of a celestial trip.
The ripples echoed secrets of ancient skies,
Of realms beyond the stars, where infinity lies.
In the vessel of the heart I sailed uncharted seas,
Adrift in the echoes of forgotten melodies.
Yet, in that moment I felt an ache,
A thirst for knowledge I knew I must partake.
The Drop, a portal to realms untold,
A journey through mysteries to unfold.
As I gazed into the depths of that tiny sea,
A question emerged that haunted me.
What tales lie waiting in The Drop’s embrace?
What revelations linger in this sacred space?
The Drop, a prism refracting the light,
Shined through realms both dim and bright.
I longed to explore, to fathom the unknown,
To journey through the cosmos, to call it my home.
I am off and sailing on the waves of contemplation,
Riding wave crests with boundless elation.
For in The Drop I became so vast,
I knew as Soul I was free at last.