The Hidden Covenant Poem by Asad Ali

The Hidden Covenant
The Master led his disciples into a sunlit garden where a fig tree stretched its ancient arms toward heaven. He placed paper and brush before them and said, "Draw for me this tree, and in your drawings, let me see the measure of your seeing."
The first disciple drew quickly — a trunk, branches, leaves, and round fruits. A childlike sketch, simple yet recognizable.
The Master smiled, "Here is the vision of the many — life seen in outlines, the surface of things, sufficient for those content with form."
The second disciple lingered longer, shading the bark, coloring the leaves, giving ripeness to the figs.
"Here is the craftsman's eye, " said the Master, "who honors detail and beauty, but still sees only what the sun illumines."
The third disciple bent low and inked the roots beneath the soil, hidden veins drinking from darkness.
"Here is the knower of mysteries, " said the Master, "who knows that what is unseen gives life to what is seen."
But the last disciple paused, then drew not only the tree and its roots, but another tree across the valley, and upon the figs he drew tiny wasps. The others laughed, for the drawing seemed crowded and strange.
The Master's eyes shone. "Here is the seer of unity."
And he said to them: 'A fig cannot bear fruit alone. Across valleys and hills it must call to its distant kin, or else remain barren. Yet even two trees, standing side by side, are helpless without a creature no larger than a fingernail — the fig wasp. She enters the hidden chambers of the fig to lay her eggs, and in that passage tears her wings, breaks her antennae, and gives her life, so that her young may live. The males, born in darkness, spend their brief existence carving tunnels of escape for their sisters. They die in silence, unknown and unseen, that life may go on. The females, carrying the golden dust of pollen upon their fragile bodies, rise into the air and fly toward another fig, where the mystery begins anew. Their lives are as fleeting as a sigh, their labors concealed from human eyes — yet without them, the mighty fig, a tree that endures for centuries, would remain forever barren, never tasting the sweetness of fruit.'"
Then the Master lifted his hand toward the drawings. "Tell me now — are the tree and the wasp two, or are they one? When one cannot be without the other, when one's death is the other's life, is it truth to name them separate? No — they are one breath, one destiny, one secret written in two forms."
And he spoke again: "So it is with the lover and the beloved, so it is with the soul and the Eternal. What you take for two is but One, mirrored in different garments. The wise do not draw separation, they draw the whole."
Asad Ali