A SAINTLY WIND TUNNEL
Our small and cramped spaces on earth are as
full of flowering orchids in full conflagration
as are those magnetic fields around planets vast enough
for whole fleets of spaceships to be lost in for
light years on their static way to
Paradise
This is meant as a sober treatise on our
glorious mortality as it sits within us just getting
comfy in our big easy chair when it suddenly has to leave
to go on to the cold outer ports and warm inner sanctums
of as yet unexperienced expectations
But how shall we get there unless joy take us in its
nets and subterfuges its ramps and volatile elevators its
sips from the secret glass that sits on God’s windowsill?
The place we’ve never left even for a moment
try as we might deny it as we try
the silken esplanade freeway to it given us at birth
without fail no matter how we scowl and carry on
if we have breath and heartbeat
and notice the shifting changes of temperature
against our sculpted surfaces within and without
though even that’s not necessary in the incessant
wind tunnel of divine light
10/26
 back
to top of page
WHERE THE SAINT AND THE LEOPARD
A lark stopped in mid-flight to notice what
arc it was in
A ship at sea suspended its motors to
contemplate its shadow
Buried deep underground a corpse saw its
skeleton and moaned
Removed from seeing on his own
the saint looked and saw only Allah
no second face!
And everywhere his eyes landed
he saw only Allah
And the leopard at the zoo
in looking at him through the bars
saw only Allah too
And for both the bars disappeared
without endangering the little boy in
green shorts with pink cotton candy standing
too close
For the bars between us exist only in
phenomena
Whereas this seeing is both before and
after phenomena and somehow even
deep within it
The leopard gets out and stretches for the
first time in ten years
The saint cups his hand over his neck to
make him docile
They travel side by side through the stars
visiting each planetary population
Though not a lick of cotton candy
has been lost
It should make you happy
No animals were harmed in the
making of this poem
And when the saint turned to go
the leopard gnashed his teeth
and lunged at the bars
“I’ll come back tomorrow” the saint said
and the entire zoo dissolved
as well as all who beheld it
The lark in its arc as well as the
ship its shadow
and the skeleton underground
“I’ll see you tomorrow” said the saint
and the zoo reappeared again
Only the Face forever aware
of its awareness
Allah’s eyes see only Allah
1/27
back
to top of page
AND SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS BEFORE DAWN PRAYER
Black cat jumps on bed at 5:30 A.M. to
start a poetry composition session
Death sits on a big black horse outside the
window chewing on a hickory stem
Doing that thing of shifting it from one
side of his mouth to the other over and over
Horse nostril breath filters across the floor in a
fine bluish mist that covers my toes
The house at this hour is St. John of the Cross silent
with various creaks and miracle adjustments
I could only hope to go out into the dark
and up a stairs all knowledge transcending
toda ciencia trascendiendo
toda ciencia trascendianedo
It sounds like lute or guitar music to say it
formula for union with the Beloved
Whose horse out the other window is riderless
the color of one valley of wildflowers giving way to another
vista past vista all the way to the sea
rising out of itself with perfect ease into the sky
The Beloved’s horse’s nostril breath infusing the air we breathe
seeping in through the windows and doors
leaving us speechless or in St. John’s words
un no se que que queda balbuciendo
An I don’t know WHAT that’s left me stuttering
in bewildering inarticulate bafflement before Him
true union that loses all knowing or saying
but what do I know?
toda ciencia trascendiendo
toda ciencia trascendiendo
It’s just now time for the morning prayer
having contemplated my way to it minute by minute
God’s two horses either side of the room
quietly munching
the dark of night slowly giving way
to the sweet light of day
1/28
back
to top of page
THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD AROSE ONE MORNING
The Prophet Muhammad arose one morning
and by evening it was obvious he was no
ordinary mortal
He was a heart that spoke to a mouth that
spoke to the ears of multitudes
And it was our hearts that heard him
through the dust and blood of time and its
wrenchings its smooth valleys and its
sudden explosions its
disappearance and its appearance again as
faces at a window asking to be let in
to Allah’s portico facing the radiant light of the
central breath
I’m aloft in the air with these thoughts
in the thrill of a fuselage heading east
confounded by the possibility of it as we
float forward without entirely
evaporating in space as buoyant as a bubble
propelled by a superior force
He came down from the cave changed utterly
all the years of the world suddenly folded into him
literally speaking of those to come through
those who’d gone before from first to last in the
perfect order of grammatical tones and
spectacular intonations
The light of his face goes before this
airplane in the dark
The light of his star goes before this
planet as its anchoring beam
The light of his heart in our hearts is what
makes us sane
4/29
(en route to the Grand Mawlid at Wembley, London)
back
to top of page
|
