Unmarked Boxes

by Rumi

[excerpt]

God’s joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,

from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flower bed.

As roses, up from ground.

Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,

now a cliff covered with vines,

now a horse being saddled.

It hides within these,

till one day it cracks them open.

From The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), page 272. Each haiku might be said to celebrate—or be—an unmarked box, each one a potential source of joy or an expression of existential gratitude, as Billy Collins once said of haiku. As for vines, see “Tigers and a Strawberry.” And as for being cracked open, see Naomi Beth Wakan’s “How to Write a Haiku.”