Watching the Whirling Dervishes
(Konya, Turkey, 1971)

whatever urge i have toward
transcendence
was likely born then no church of
my childhood
no buddhist temple in thailand had
prepared me
for this music and dance and meditation
merged
into a single repeating motion which
imitates
the spinning of galaxies and the whirling of
an atom
consciousness pulled inward to become
the axis
around which the body and the world circle
the center
of the maelstrom where no water
is
a still place i had never imagined
the possibility
of a peace i had never felt before i felt then
watching
the whirling dervishes dance

(KZ 2016)