New Ramadan Poem

MIDNIGHT PING-PONG MATCH
A midnight ping-pong match
is playing among the stars
Atoms careen through space smacked by
invisible paddles
The shadow of the Player Who plays both
sides leans over our hearts
The tick-tock sound of the ping-pong balls
can be heard in our ears among the
singsong of speech and in the
soft darkness of silken silences
But the shadow in our hearts
peers deep [...]

An amazing visual adventure…

My friend, Hakim Archuletta, with whom I became Muslim in 1970, sent this on to me today, and it is truly mesmerizing… (a little Ramadan gift)

Poems from Ramadan Sonnets

(With prayers that everyone on earth benefit from this year’s Ramadan Fast, far and wide, high and low, and that the blessings become an ocean that touches everyone’s hearts.
I’ll be posting poems from time to time during the month from my book, Ramadan Sonnets, written each Ramadan day in 1986, insha’Allah.
And with news soon of [...]

Poem: Fifteenth Night of Shabaan

A ball of mercury
slides down an incline into a pool
reflecting all the starry heavens
making a whispery inaudible splash
A planet dislodges from its orbit and
wobbles out of tune with its
moons and asteroids following suit
and for a millennia or two a tiny
corner of the universe is in
disarray shivering in disquietude
unfelt by all earthly beings except perhaps
the poisonous [...]

Poem: Great Boat

We live in the hold of a great boat
moving through the stars
There are no windows in this boat
and it is all window
The rudder’s held fast by a
force we can’t imagine
The bow’s pointed to a
place we’ll never know
The high sea and the high air
we breathe are all the same
It is night and navigation is by
celestial lights
There’s [...]