25th day of Ramadan 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

8/25/011  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

8/25/11  25 Ramadan (from Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight)

Categories: Poems, Ramadan / 'Eid, Fasting