the smile

Galen, the great physician, asked one of his assistants

to give him a certain medicine.

"Master, that medicine is for crazy people!

You're far from needing that!"

Galen: "Yesterday a madman turned and smiled at me,

did his eyebrows up and down, and touched my  sleeve.

He wouldn't have done that if he hadn't recognized 

in me someone congenial."

Anyone that feels drawn,

for however short a time, to anyone else,

those two share a common consciousness.

It's only in the grave that unlike beings associate.

A wise man once remarked, "I saw a crow and a stork

flying together, and I couldn't understand it,

until I investigated and found what they shared.

They were both lame."

~ Rumi

from Rumi's Little Book of Love and Laughter

version bu Coleman Barks

photo by Sean Thomas