Entombed

   

There is no end to fear or anger, grief or pain

When rubbed and polished until it shines

All metallic and cold

And then is entombed tenderly in the chest

Where the heart used to be

A Convert’s Tale

 

He went into his garden in a state of mind unjust to his soul: He said, “I deem not that this will ever perish (Quran 18:35)

 

How does it feel to see the

Earth that nurtured you covered

With condos and townhouses—

Gone beneath new sidewalks and sod?

 

Those who roam it now do not know

They do not touch the earth

 

The earth that felt the pounding

Of children’s playful feet as they ran and shrieked

And laughed through childhood games

In front of creaking apartments where no one

Was poor (for how can you be poor if you

Have what everyone else has?)—

Where there were only aunts and uncles and cousins

The grandparents, the neighbors, the churchgoers

The shopkeepers who’d known your people

For thirty years or more

That earth was our refuge

 

Those who drive past manicured lawns

In quiet, air-conditioned cars do not hear the earth

 

The earth that heard the sounds

Of lovemaking, the arguments and fights

Of the grown-ups who left each day

To struggle through the world outside

Then came back to bury their frustrations,

Their pain, their humiliations in gin and sin and sex

In parties and in prayer, in music and in the joy

Of those small, brown babies that toddled among them

 

Those who relish smooth white walls, new stone edifices

And fresh concrete do not see the earth

 

Do not see the earth that saw generations

Displaced and scattered as bulldozers destroyed

And wrecking crews eviscerated their memory

From the landscape

Or the crews that came to construct

The other lives heedless of those

Whose blood and tears and joy

Were locked in the earth beneath their feet

 

I see them unaware and remember

How as a child in this same place,

I tried to listen for the sounds

Of forests I knew had been there once

And pretended I that could almost hear the lives

In the Odawa villages trapped beneath the sidewalks

 

Now Allah has blessed me

To ponder His meaning

In the memory of my life

As it rests beneath my own feet

Buried below the newly paved streets

Lost somewhere in the earth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Place of Gratitude

 

 

 

Where words cease
And language cannot describe
That is the place where tears begin

Where the body cannot reach
Though it meets the unseen
That is the place where tears begin

Where emotions tumble
So the heart cannot decipher itself
That is the place where tears begin

In gratitude to Allah
For all of His Mercies
All unexpected, all undeserved

© 2007 Umm Umar

 

 

My Heart

There are times when my heart
Is so full of fear
It aches from the weight of it
 
There are times when my heart
Is so full of joy
That it flutters like a bird full wanting to take flight
From the sheer joy of submission to its existence

There are times when my heart
Is so full of shame and grief
That it bends like a willow, weeping for forgiveness—
Its boughs trailing in a stream, the tears of its repentance

                                            © 2007 UmmUmar

Kauthar

       

I stand on the shore                 
Scanning the horizon
While the waters of sorrow
Lap at my feet

I feel the waters’ slow warmth
I ignore the soft desire to look down
To wade into them, to submerse myself
Or to drown

I look only to You
I look only toward the waters of Kauthar
That may one day replace the waters of sorrow
That are lapping at my feet

 ©  UmmUmar 2007

Incentive

 

I go to bed pulling the covers

Like a shroud around me

And the darkened room

Becomes my tomb

A Small Collection of Stones

 

Release in a Muslim’s moment
The joy and anger
Of glorious retaliation
Against weakness and sin

Relief at the jamarat
Is in a small collection of stones
Missiles against the Shaitiin
Whistling through the air

UmmUmar © 2007