![](https://ecstaticxchange.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/trapeze-300x190.jpg)
The Rowers
The rowers of the big boats had no letup The trapeze artist has to catch his mate for once in midair it’s too late…
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
8/25/011 25 Ramadan
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
8/25/11 25 Ramadan (from Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight)
Categories: Poems, Ramadan / 'Eid, Fasting