Category Archives: fasting

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Poem: A Sandwich at Noon


A sandwich at noon is enough to
frighten a field of crows

A telephone ringing in an empty room is
answered by the wind

A road leading upward has a
bicycle on it and two trees

When the blessings were brought in
the sun rolled to a stop

Going past the stables all the black horses
flared their nostrils at once

The month of light was sealed and sent to its
Divine Recipient the year we

lived in trees and
sang at dawn

There’s a stubbornness in refusing to flow
out the gate onto the fresh fields of

clover and recently turned pasturage

The celebration began when the moon
turned into a table set with

silver utensils and Samarkand oranges

Rainbows seemed to fill every window
from multiple light sources

The room spun around while we
remained still but it never went

faster than the earth’s rotation
and the spiralling stars

Young girl acrobats stood on
each other’s shoulders almost reaching

the moon

Daylight fills every corner and awakens
the mouse family

Grandpa told this in story form and it
all cohered

But today is another day and the
dolphins have all departed

back to their pods

Does the earth revolve toward us or
away from us?

Does the sky pass behind us
or ahead of us?

Take a step in any direction
and you’re home

where the celebration continues
until dawn though the

rooster may not crow it open
flopping his red crown

I’ve covered a lot of ground sitting here
and don’t intend to correct it

I try not to be out with my sheep
when God visits my hovel

but the north side of the mountain gets chilled
before a fire can be properly stoked

I hear a buzz of words in the air
mixed with a buzz of insects and the

usual high frequency buzz in my ears
I take as celestial music

Deciphering is all we do and we do it
best in our sleep

I greet anyone intrepid enough to speak
and anyone foolhardy enough to listen

It’s over now
The dawn is up

A new day’s begun
_________________
8/30
30 Ramadan (Eid Mubarak!)

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Poem: Elusive Crescent


Ah coy crescent hiding in a blush of sky
so many want to see you and

hold you to our hearts
each in our own perimeters however

spread across the earth all searching
for your quick eyeblink that promises

untold bounteous rewards for our
month of doing without in

obedience to first sighting you nearly
hidden as always in your rosy cheek of clouds

What a miracle! That there could be
only one of you when so many

hearts have mirrors extended skyward to reflect your
silvery light asliver with such slight

shiveriness and so soon
gone again below the curve of our brows

And why not many crescents in God’s
Generous Splendor that not each

statue of us stand stock still on the

exact same spot of day but each of your
lovers has your breath upon our glass

a mist of love you sign your shy
name to

furtive in the sky

as we end our fast?
___________________
8/29
29 Ramadan

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2 Poems: Nighttime Sessions of Light / The Repetitions of Saints


NIGHTTIME SESSONS OF LIGHT
for Baji (who heard the geese
calling out Allah Allah)

Intense nighttime sessions of Light
spangle the planetary air and the

lunar crescendo yup I said the

lunar crescendo as we
head toward Ramadan’s exit back into

temptation’s roundelay yup I said

temptation’s roundelay that seems to go round and
round though for one blessed

month a year we step off it whether it
grinds to a halt or goes off its

spiraling pivot with sparks
screeching the asphalt as in

“Strangers on a Train” that
catastrophic carousel atilt in extremity

for all Eternity

But a crystally nighttime dome appears and we
look out onto blessed Blakean moonlight

and daytime geese across the sky above us
honk the Divine Name as

clearly as can be as they head toward
Canada in a fine summer rain

and we’re back on earth again
_____________________________
8/26
26 Ramadan
__________________________________________

THE REPETITIONS OF SAINTS

for Bawa Muhaiyuddeen (et al.)

The repetitions of saints flow through every
leaf and glisten hanging by threads from

branches of Divine Breath interwoven

in the universe’s big starry basket tilted in His
burning Glance and suspended by His

cool ocular steadiness throughout time to tip out
lively bubbles of intensest Grace in

which we live and that live in us for
all time to come as we

slide through the billion worlds by the pulse of those
repetitions heartbeat by heartbeat in the

saints’ huge bodies
thinner than a hair

held aloft for a nanosecond
in the air

I sit near the saint’s empty bed in his
green room where so many angels make for

barely enough elbow-space so
tightly packed angelic

elbow to elbow and
wing to incandescent wing

and everything’s become a giant ear
on a wave rising perceptibly entrance-ward

to God’s perfect everywhere
___________________
8/26
26 Ramadan

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2 Poems: If We Woke Up One Morning / Blue Circles


IF WE WOKE UP ONE MORNING

If we woke up one morning to find
we didn’t exist

would the fast be abrogated?

Or be more completely fulfilled?

If we were a
vague fractal outline among mountain crags or

mounded clouds

or mingled in aromatic breezes through
maple leaves in an

urban backyard whose branches lean
over a back alley fence

or a silence among howls of wolves
or the screeching of bus brakes

and we existed only as a peaceable serenity in a
transparent atmosphere that could

take place anywhere anytime on earth

watching through eyes God watches through
into the poignant brutalities of His

creation as well as its upsurging and
overpoweringly intense Light through it all

and we were here but not here just as
Ramadan’s four or more invisible dimensions

slide down into our lives in time and almost
make us non-existent in a

strange way with sharper sensitivities to
the fall of each sparrow or birth of each

moth who lands on our bathroom
mirror and suddenly

doubles itself facing itself where
before there was none

and we
see it land in its

bright fragile beauty
and are amazed
_____________________
8/25
25 Ramadan
_____________________________

BLUE CIRCLES

Tell again the story of how you saw the
two blue circles rhyme

as in a circus

and how the ground was wet and the
light hard to see by

and how a zebra loomed out of the
shadows and

caught you off guard as you
walked past the rotating bird

One night of the year when
God is so close you can almost see a

breath along the ground that
can’t be explained any other way

than divine
and the animals grow still

and the quiet becomes a
dimension in which we dwell

That night like no other
showing the worth of our waiting

and what we are made of
nothing we can quantify

of a worth whose worthlessness we
cannot estimate and a

worthlessness whose every one of us
is monarch of our little space

where God dwells and king becomes
slave to live in pure

mathematical harmony
with His self-erasing Infinity

enough light for the

blind tightrope walker to sing as she
crosses to the other side

above us
__________________________
8/25
25 Ramadan

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Poem: Ramadan is a Gorgeous Chorus


Ramadan is a gorgeous chorus
repeated in a mist above glades of

green wheat bending in blue light

Ramadan meets itself coming in from
the rain with its face slick and shining

and sits at our table as it vanishes with all its
viands back into pure spirit set with

foaming golden goblets of Paradise

A warm breeze aromatic with jasmine
rises around our bodies as we

pass between miles of monotone graves on our
way to Eternity’s low doorway

A fountain appears in the middle of
everything and in its splashing music

proclaims exactly why we endure the
fast and how He will embrace us

on the other side in the
sweet exhaustion of our endurance

Scrolls of fire turn into waterfalls of
ice in the air all around us

each with our own particular wisdom

as the world sets like a planet under the
moon’s horizon of our lunar month

and we let its ribbons and streamers
go as it pursues its worldly parade

up to cliff-edge after cliff-edge of seemingly
unavoidable disaster

Ramadan has freed us and it’s for
us to remain in this concentrated

state now for Allah’s sake alone
eating the grapes of unity and sipping

its wine in every weather of
satisfaction with His

impeccable Decree
_________________
8/24
24 Ramadan

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2 Poems: Fast / Heart & Soul


FAST

Puppets can’t break their fast
through their painted mouths

Rocks can be said to be
fasting forever

Mountain “fastnesses” are a kind of
stronghold or fortress

Colors are fast that never
cut and run

The Ramadan fast goes by day by
sometimes-uphill-day anything but

fast

though if we fasten ourselves to it
it seems to go faster

and with an “e” thrown in for
“effort” we can look

forward to a feast

and so faithfully fulfill our
fast
__________
8/22
22 Ramadan
_____________________________________

HEART & SOUL

If all my poems seem to end up in the
same place it’s because I

also want to end up there
grateful to God and

showered by the bliss of His Face

Starting from a shadow say cast by an
alleyway in Chinatown on a dark

Wednesday or off a ship say in Nova Scotia
smelling of codfish and sea brine or

landing in Rome hoping to visit the
languorous green vineyards of Tuscany

but moving forward in the time left to us
which might be decades or ten seconds only

each footstep a compass point pinpoint on our
still unrolling map with its

expectancies and definite concisions
leaving some slack time or clenching it

tighter for God’s own utterly precise
pinpointed compass pointing

to which we can only happily concede

always going with His sweet Will and
little of our own with eyes open and

His name and deep destination
always on our lips heart and soul

or when we suddenly remember having
momentarily dreamed our little life away

to get back to it

with forward lunge and straight shot
heading out both heart and soul to seek

His fortune and its plenitudes and
none of our own or only

as much of “our own” as will
help in the project

to get us there
__________________
8/23
23 Ramadan

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Poem: Ramadan Suns Itself


Ramadan suns itself by the dark of night
and takes no notice of

earthquake or flood

Ramadan begins walking toward us from the
furthest hilltop of the previous year

and arrives at our door with
baskets of golden fruit

Although Ramadan seems most at home in
lavish “oriental” settings of jeweled

ewers and plashing fountains
our faces can best be reflected in its

battered tin plates and small sheltered ponds

No one has ever disappeared into Ramadan
never to be seen again

or if they do they appear again at the
Festival in bright silvery clothes

handing out sweets wrapped in our
most personal names

Ramadan is the most patient among us
and endures our anxieties with

perfect poise
never turning its face away

If we knew the treasures of Ramadan we would
want the fast to take place every

day of the year

but the sparkling gold of its coins dissolves into
denominational numbers when

Ramadan ends

If Ramadan were a horse it would be
a herd of the finest thoroughbreds

and each of us would be assigned the one most
suited to our variable temperaments

Ramadan is an ocean that waits each year in a
dimension of space and when it

bursts onto shore it
inundates our souls having transformed our

slightest actions into flying doves

Ramadan ends the way it begins
silently and with the

deepest humility

leaving through the same front door
through which it came

When the Prophet tightens his belt for
Ramadan each of us feels it

some losing and some gaining
the weight of its privations

Love arrives in the disguise of Ramadan
and when it removes its mask we find

it’s been with us all along
as familiar to us as

ourselves

but more than we were before
and less
____________________________
8/21
21 Ramadan

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Poem: With a Two-Legged Goat & a Flying Fish


Who I’ve become after all my
adventures on land

is a seventy-one year-old man who
fasts from dawn to sundown

sailing off across the day
with a two-legged goat and a

flying fish searching for the
source of all this daylight

avoiding the usual ports of call
in favor of sleepy villages where

everyone knows everyone’s name and
night rolls its huge velvet

blanket over the rooftops of the
satisfied and satisfactory villagers

If I meet you once I’ll remember your
face forever

but your name might roll back into the
Babylonian directory of ghostly mortals

And if you see me in one place you’ll maybe
see me in another as

likely as a face appearing from
inside an iceberg

or a song audible in a
light spring rainfall

This is all coming right out of nowhere
and like all of us goes right

back where it came from
though at the end of the day when

plates are filled with rainbow
meats and Technicolor juices

and the tattooed sails are
mended for tomorrow and the

goat hobbles onto evening pastures
and the flying fish finally finds a

plot of water to plop in

you’ll see celebration in my eyes
of all these seventy-one years

come to fruition

and “God be praised!” on my lips
even if cracked by the many minor

hardships endured
_________________
8/20
20 Ramadan

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Poem: Extend Your Shadow


If you haven’t been parted from
what you truly love

then foot cannot follow foot
nor heart follow heart

Beasts born in the wild have the
wild to bring them to

their higher education

How can we see what
will wire us to bring us

to the deep circuitry of
God’s illumination?

None but Ahmad the Radiant One
peace be upon him

cast no shadow

Shall we cut away our shadows to
stride from them in the Prophet’s

shadowless dominion?

Or embrace our luscious darknesses
to both tame and extend their

shapely union?

The sun in each galaxy
is the central teacher

across this edgeless universe
of myriad circumferences

each sun the single pivot who
binds each orbit to its

divinely turning dances

and the tilt of its orbs
is each one’s consequences

Though the Prophet had the moon’s face
his Light was that of the sun

Oh Shams of all time to come!

In our own hearts galactic wheels
are turning

and the sound of melodic sighing
fills our ears with its burning

and its song of separation
fills our yearning

For everyone God’s departure has
never taken place —

Extend your shadow to become
the incandescence of His Face?
______________________________
8/19
19 Ramadan

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Poem: A Spider’s Break-Fast


The small brown spider in my bathroom
(honored guest whose

protection is assured)
after more than two weeks of patient waiting

finally got a large tasty black fly-like
bug this morning in her

helter-skelter-looking web (to
me at least) linked to a retracting

mirror and the wall near a
nightlight I keep on so she perhaps

likes the dim glow and mild heat

And all through the night she spent
wrapping and sucking out the

goodness and turning and turning the trapped
big bug around in her legs

and this morning at dawn as well she was
still rotating it in her

spidery fashion but when I
peered at her just now past noon

no trace of bug remained (pitiful
remnants on the floor below?) but my

lady spider’s abdomen bulges elegantly
round so she’s no doubt now

dreaming away and digesting her
sweet feast in whatever consciousness a

spider has or needs and is probably
sated enough for now to await the

next morsel as patiently as she
must
_____
8/18
18 Ramadan

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Poem: Halfway Through the Fast


Halfway through the fast
is it a giant granite stone we shoulder

uphill in a boiling sun?

Or pool after reflective shady
pool in fragrant afternoons that

flow everywhere?

Is it coming face to face with
ourselves holding an empty

walnut shell in a
cubicle of mirrors

or suddenly relieved of the
anatomical discomforts of our

egos’ slouches and shrugs we think
define us

now we sit as easy as
weightless jockeys on

horses of burnished silver
for the race to the finish?

The universe surrounds us with a
personable hug

that with days of
gastronomical emptiness we sense the

deft butterfly touch that actually
makes up its doings and

goings

Allah’s subtlety in the
interconnectedness of all things

as our beings move forward while others
sail past in the opposite

way but go to the exact
same place in His dazzling

geometrical perfection

these close-ups of shattered and
reshaped patterns pouring their

diamond endlessness all around us
Light upon

irrefutable
Light
___________
8/16
16 Ramadan

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Poem: Hand of Light


A crater opens in the day
and swallows us whole

Though we may want to
wander at the base of it

asking for water
we do not

Instead we lean back against its diamonds
and act nonchalant

Inside us huge circular processions
flow around God’s cubical House

They are incessant and
no one seems to mind

In fact each one of them is
ascending a diamond mountain so

near Allah’s intimate Hearing they
brush against the unspeakable

tenderness there that makes even
stones weep

This is a time like no other

We wouldn’t barter it for the world

If the world knew its worth they would
demand its largesse in even

larger quantities and
pay for it with their lives

Perhaps it’s a
secret kept pure by being

kept secret

Yet its essence is no secret at all
but so well known every citizen alive

vibrates heartfully at its deep harmonious
core

one month of the moon
in its death and rebirth to clear silver

no one escaping from God’s
hand of Light passing over them

to set them free into the

captivity of His love
______________________
8/15
15 Ramadan

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Poem: Ramadan Goes Looking


(without music)

(with music)

Ramadan goes looking for the
people who fast the best

wearing the phases of the moon
as a shield upon its breast

ignoring stars and galaxies
as too far out in space

concentrating instead
on light in a faster’s face

or if a face is darkened
what is passing through the heart

of someone who resists the world
for this month so set apart

It goes to the best and worst places
looking for a perfect one

who finds the diamond of Ramadan
flashing in the daytime sun

High and low it searches
among the elegant and the poor

who put aside food and drink
to stand in Allah’s corridor

awaiting entrance to His precincts
where finer delicacies are served

who spend their days in fasting
and never think to swerve

It climbs to mountain caves
and sits with hermit saints

and sees illumined worlds in eyes
no words can ever paint

of nearness by Allah’s tight blessing
on the hearts of His bosom friends

who’ve left all vestiges of matter
for nourishment that never ends

But then it sees a glimmer
not far off at all

in the deep intention of everyone
to fulfill the Prophet’s call

that shines in the heart of our hearts
and is the diamond behind that shine

to endure hardship for Allah’s sake
however simple or sublime

And sees in its faceted perfection
every faster’s face

on the surface of that diamond
out of all time and space

in the answer to Allah’s call
to turn to Him alone

before everything we so love in the world
turns to stone
_______________
8/14
14 Ramadan

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Poem: Signs of Allah


When the tide of the day pulls out and
leaves the night standing on the shore

swallowing the stars

and the moon is nearly halfway to
completing its luminous shell

and the night stretches its arms to
expand as far as the

globe’s curvature will allow
with the sun’s spotlight lighting up where

night is not and the night
darkening to the hazy line between them

and we take all this into our
bodies with the daytime fast

are we not now inhabiting a space that is
neither exactly terrestrial nor celestial

but by the decree of prophetic consciousness
participating as we might otherwise not

in the in and out breathing of Allah’s most
essential creating?

We see the signs of Allah on the
horizons of heaven and earth

and they are

ourselves
_______________
8/14
14 Ramadan

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Poem: Ramadan’s Flame Hoops


OK let’s get this straight —

Who wants to fast really?

Put the body through drought’s
grinding chains?

Not reach for the plum or the chocolate
bonbon?

When we see a Chinese contortionist and
think how can she put her head onto

her feet like that without her spine
snapping and that we might also think

and why?

Or a lion capable of
snapping the head off the spangled

guy with the whip
but instead roars and

leaps through a fiery hoop?

How close did the
spangled guy have to get to having his

head bitten off before

perfecting that smooth
sleek slow motion leap through flames to the

pit orchestra’s brassy flourish?

It’s a hard life we make even
harder by submitting to not eating for

nearly sixteen hours of normal
daylight?

But such a curious
turnabout happens when it’s in a

dimension obligatory to Allah that truly
boggles the reluctant mind

in that a kind of garden does
open its pearl-handled gate in a

space that suddenly
imposes itself all during that

time and our
mortality actually always

hanging by a thread becomes
really quite incandescent!

I mean
crowded with

angels
known or unbeknownst to us

It so often
seems so

Our reluctant lion roars and we
put our heads on our feet

somehow passing through
Ramadan’s flame hoops

with ease

8/12
12 Ramadan

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Poem: His Pure Presence


A goat eats grass off the Beloved’s hill
and gives white milk to the Beloved’s Messenger

O body of seemingly little worth
discarded at our entrance to the

truer life
you are our road to Light troubled or

at ease

pockmarked with road-ruts or
smooth as Sahara dunes

and though we leave you behind

how precious we’ve been born in you
and travel in your

rubbery vehicle
on hidden bone tracks

to moment after moment of
space-time perfection

in an eyeblink

here one minute
the next minute

spatial

our gaze unceasing over all

The Prophet came among us
grew to manhood

died

yet his pure presence is as palpable
as space itself

Having drunk the milk we
drink each day

giving up food and drink
for a moon-cycle

for God’s sweet sake alone
__________________________
8/11
11 Ramadan

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Poem: Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight


Ramadan is burnished sunlight on the
cheek of the Beloved at the

first dawn of creation

first fruits burst on first green
branches in the first Garden

their ripening a whole
lunar month without being picked

till they burst with the
celestial pleasure of pure being

Ramadan hunkers down in the extreme
depths of heaven and earth

simultaneously

as deep in the earth as the sky
bound together with immaterial

coils in the
knot of our fleshly hunger

It’s a luminous door down a long hall in a
yearly wall in space

past rooms of resplendent solitudes and
incantatory gatherings with a

vision at the end of a tall silver stag whose
antlers are flames lighting our

way to inconceivable pastures
where endless bounty abounds

A weighty touch from an emptiness that
strikes sparks in our hearts

a turning from one light to another
even brighter than ocular radiance

Lick the tongue of it with our tongues!

Clear the throat of it with our throats!

Surround the sight of it in a blind blizzard of
overpouringness into our

suddenly increased dimension
as we stand a bit shakily at His

window
praising His Name
_________________
8/10
10 Ramadan

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Poem: The Things of This World


The things of this world have
gone a remove while fasting

as if through a kind of glazed window just
out of reach

which is where they always are though we
clutch their ghosts to us in a

curious waltz and
hope for the best

Ramadan casts its star-like
light making things stand out in

sharp relief from an
even starrier background

releasing us in His Mercy from their
clankier chains
______________________
8/9
9 Ramadan

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Poem: Splendid Excitement of the Coming Day


Splendid excitement of the coming day!

Palaces might await us filled with
the tangiest grapes

down esplanades of golden cypresses
behind walls we can

barely see over at dawn for the
height of their occasional distractions

But melodious lute music from a
hidden courtyard exudes

fragrant strums that
invite our hungry hearts to float past

their rough material stones

OK it’s a day of fasting whose
treasures remain unseen

but we can almost feel the
spatial pressure to let them burst and

unload over us as the day progresses

and though their
gold may be nontransferable on the

common market

already the gurgle of flashing rivers of love’s coins
delights our ears

and their deeper wealth entices us

Oh that sumptuous dazzling palace before us!
Wild festivities jingle-jangle there!

Endless dancing of heavenly bodies!

No breath taken that isn’t
Allah’s Name in a taste of

majestic succulence!
_______________________
8/8
8 Ramadan

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Poem: A Fiery Glow in the Heart


Taste the nothing that isn’t
and the nothingness that is

How many giraffes could gallop through those
words with their incredible vertical lope?

The nothing that isn’t sounds like a
glove that if you pull it on your whole

body disappears to
pop up elsewhere

looking back at you through an
enormous window

The closer we get the
quieter it gets around us

I think whales understand this
moving through the deeps

We have these mouths and
digestive tracts through which the

world in all its dazzle passes

though we bite empty air

The joy of breaking the fast is
the meeting with our Lord

my Lord and your Lord

in an open plain with a
warm wind

as we pull on that glove and
disappear

Great yellow flowers bloom in the
trees and a golden road

undulates toward the X
where our destiny is fulfilled

biting empty air
turned inside-out around us

A catch of stars on the
roof of the house

a fiery glow
in the heart
___________________
8/7
7 Ramadan