Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight $10 (or $17 with CD direct from the author ordered by email)

Ramadan is such a slice of timelessness into time for us fasters, and a doorway to such miraculous moments throughout its rigors, and has about it a personality of its own from Allah and His attendant angelic forces and prophetic miracles, that we are all propelled forward in its raw sunlight, burnished by our nighttime devotions and our faithful daytime fasting. These are not litanies for prayer, nor traditional Ramadan observances, perhaps, but fresh arrivals from my experience of fasting, as I look forward to an even longer summer day next year at Ramadan time (with yes a bit of trepidation as always), and hopefully a few more treasure- troves to come, insha’Allah, with God’s blessing on all of us.

Poem Selection from Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight

Adam Stood in the World

giant-tree

Adam stood in the world
as tall as the trees

the sun bathing his body
birds wreathing his outline with

birdsong
waters everywhere splashing

growls and grandeur of new animals
ache of new growths everywhere

sounding

Alone he stood with a
hunger in his heart reaching out to

touch the edible nothingness
around him

His own essence before his
birth in Allah’s domain

nourished on Light and the Names he’ll
name creation with

to keep each radiant thing linked to
Allah’s single simultaneous

action in the unseen

each kind of leaf made consciousness
each cloud in passing also conscious

each Adam-named element
dimensionalizing the world

and the angels

all on prophet Adam’s
fasting tongue

articulating even
now if we bend in

close to our hearts to hear
that original

soft sound

8/3/2011 / 3 Ramadan (from Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight)

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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

8/10/11   10 Ramadan (from Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight)

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