Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "Birdwings"

Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror

up to where you’re bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
                                                                            and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

"Birdwings" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne. © HarperCollins Publishers, 1995.

Photograph: Unknown (originally color).