…some people pick up their tools.
Others become the making itself.
Rumi
I came across these lines from Rumi while prowling through the bookshelves at Dayspring Retreat Farm here in Maryland a few weeks ago. I’m trying to understand them. Nurses are often taught that they are their most important tool. They use their minds, hearts and bodies to offer knowledge, compassion and physical care.
Does this apply to poets? If so, how? Surely it’s not about the persona of the stereotypical poet —eccentric, intellectual, self-referential, lost to the world of everyday.
A friend once told me she dreamed that I lived in the house of poetry. It was her dream, not mine. Still, I’ve not forgotten it—even used it in some verses of a poem.
My friend had a dream
that I lived in the house of poetry.
A woodsy cottage with just one door or
a light-filled penthouse floating on cloud?
She never told.
I sit at my desk, mind adrift
in the vast rooms of imagination
idly plucking at words
those glittering singularities
each a miniature universe
primed for its own Big Bang
set to create real estate
on this blank page.
Is this what Rumi meant by becoming the making?