Rumi's New Year's Message

I came across this website a few days ago for the first time and thought this person did a wonderful job expounding on this very short Rumi poem. Then I got the idea this could be a nice Rumi's New Year's message to the world, along with another I will offer a link to from the same Rumi book, that this aforementioned website also cites.

This second weblink gets into poetry in general, and might be interesting and educational to some readers. That second Rumi poem is offered as the last— point 5— on this link, and offers a famous Hafiz quote from I Heard God Laughing, my first Hafiz book, published about 30 years ago. 

I have been saying at times: that to me, some of the best of Hafiz & Rumi are like Carl Jung times ten gone poet. All here (and with this excellent mentioned annotation) bring that to mind again. 

Freedom, freedom, freedom is really at the very heart of all teachings of any value ... I think. Our every movement is an attempt for freedom— no matter what one does. And is not the greatest freedom— loving something? “Things are such!”

I collaborated on a, to me, significant esoteric article for the online magazine, The Culturium; a kind of God 102-plus essay, titled: “The Unfoldment of the Rose.” In some ways, it expounds on all of my Hafiz & Rumi work, in that: to one who might really see, and might really know— everything is truly equal, because all has the same miraculous substance, value and origin. It is all part of The Unfoldment of the Rose, the unfoldment of Existence—of God. 

And here are some lovely words from one of my many unpublished Hafiz poems, that surely could have been sung by Rumi also:

I help the golden birds to fly, by helping them 

know how truly golden and miraculous they are. 

—Hafiz 

I have about 1000 poems published with Penguin Random House in seven books, and I think most every poem could be a New Year's message. And being a grounded old cowboy (and loving the utility in poems and writings), here is one more from Rumi, a playful one, from my anthology, Love Poems from God. Give it a try, cause it is relationship advice, and who couldn't use that now and then? The poem is even titled: “Relationship Booster” and reads: 

I know a relationship booster that is 

guaranteed to work:

Every time your spouse or lover says

something stupid ...

make your eyes light up as if you just

heard something brilliant!

—Rumi, trying to help the munchkins.

And that might save you from a divorce, or having to sleep on the couch. Yeah— the utility in a good poem. I think Hafiz and Rumi are masters of that.

And indeed a good 2024 to all of us. Some good poems can help the wing keep tasting the sky, and loving the earth and each other the best we can.