Clarifying Vision
An alchemist looks at his laboratory and sees penguins drinking tea He looks again and sees it’s his beakers bubbling A king l…
At our night of dhikr last night our
shaykh asked us what Ramadan is to each
one of us personally and
insisted that we not answer with
fancy platitudes embroidering
this and that but go deep and
come up with a true response
And I suddenly remembered one very dark
night nearly fifty years ago walking with a
friend on a pitch-black road back from a
village in Mexico to where we were
staying in Ajijic
No moon not a star in the sky
and we knew the
road well so we were walking along at a
brisk pace when suddenly
WHAM! I hit something
flat in my chest that
stopped me cold as if I’d walked into a
solid wall
Black cow invisible in the night crossing the
road right in front of me
that I could barely make out even after
squinting my eyes
until I reached out and
felt its passing hairy bulk
The fast of Ramadan
puts us up against it
Against our mortality our daily
existence on earth our nafs
No more fancy talk
only Allah
8/5/2011 5 Ramadan (from Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight)
Categories: Poems, Ramadan / 'Eid, Fasting