I am reading Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, poetry by Hafiz-e Shirazi. He is challenging me to become more comfortable with ambiguity. I will share his poem and some of my thoughts on his poem (sometimes with the help of experts when the concepts are too hard for me), followed by a poem and some art inspired by his poem.

Hafiz’s Poem 31:

Our hands are short

The dates
High up on the tree

Some thoughts:

There are so many different directions this poem could go. The dates, out of reach so high up the tree, could represent a goal, a desire, nourishment, or a promise of sweetness, joy deferred. In Hafiz’s Persian culture, they would have been a staple, part of many recipes as a sweetener. The inability to reach the fruit could represent our human limitations, our need for community, or the recognition that we must learn to think outside the box. There are ways to get to the fruit that don’t involve growing longer arms. We can climb, get a ladder, shake the tree, wait until it gets ripe enough to fall, ask for help from others, etc. Perhaps the poem is asking us to ponder our needs and determine what it is we most need to learn from the situation. Do we need to develop patience and wait for the fruit to fall? Do we need to learn to ask for help and get support from our community? Do we need to develop some initiative and do some problem-solving to get our needs met? Do we need to take a class in date harvesting to gather more information about our dilemma? Like I said, there are many ways to look at this and any of them could be a great lesson, depending on our circumstances.

My Poem 31:

I want to be rich enough to pay
my bills on the day they are due,
if not early each month.

I want to be so rich, the only thing
I worry about is who to help next
with the extra money I’ve earned.

I want to be the kind of rich
that goes grocery shopping
without tabulating a total as I go.

I want to be richer than it takes
to retire all the great-grandparents
in our family so they can rest.

I want to be the richest person
who still drives a Toyota Camry
and lives in a multi-generational home.

I want rich written all over my receipts
for paying off every school loan
for every relative and friend I know.

I want richer than rich opportunities
to flow into every household of every
human on earth who wishes others well.

I want to richify our schools, hospitals,
libraries, daycares, nursing homes,
and animal shelters with infinite abundance.

Hafiz. Hafiz’s Little Book of Life. Translated by Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2023.