At the edge of the swamp, drink in the mundane beauty of tall grass, green and gold in its dying, a lovely copper choker of dead plants around its throat, all the more color full against a monochrome backdrop of nude limbs and twigs and trunks. Will we ever learn to cherish this divine home?

“Sha’ir” is the Arabic word for “declared.” It is used to speak of Sufi poetry using earthly metaphors for spiritual experience.

A Divine Invitation 

You have been invited to meet 
The Friend. 
No one can resist a Divine Invitation. 
That narrows down all our choices 
To just two: 
We can come to God 
Dressed for Dancing, 
Or Be carried on a stretcher 
To God’s Ward.

--Hafiz* 

*I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy (Penguin Books)