No earthbound morning is this

when we walk together

past the huge exalted folds of ancient tombstones

through an open wild mist that severs our throat

and a deep green so warm like love

past the Christian and Jewish quarters

to a piece of earth

where we bury our dead.

We talk of tombstone colors

in hushed intimate tones

you do not like gray

it does not breathe.

I wonder if you think of exile,

and how this land now fills our blood

with roots of belonging.

Later I wonder how green tombstones

and red flowers flow out of the fragrant depths of your mind.

We climb a little and approach the spot

where the soil spreads like water

over her body.

We lift our palms to pray,

but all I can think of is you in 1962

a proud man with a wound of some sort

bending to a moon layered with migrant hymns on the Potomac

dreaming of the claylike swell of the Nile

stripped by the warmth in the play of her eyes.

I see you resting beneath

eucalyptus trees

your head on her lap

your sleep filled with breezy afternoon dreams.

And through this trembling

I swear I see beautiful floods

waiting, unnamed,

the translucent love bond between mother and son.

My mother’s voice rises above the sound of waterfalls,

past a thousand orchards

of love,

she sheds the tread of pain imprisoned in her body

and drops beside you

depositing petals that glow melancholy in your ear.

And we return

to the parched blossom of time,

wrinkled with longing.

Of the Fragile Hour in Between

[For my grandmother, as she lay in a coma, in Gaza]

Why do you hover here

in this lagoon of skin and bones

entangled in these melodic veins

surfacing with no voice

to an insatiable hum of memory?

What are these cliffs

branched out and heavy, like sadness

hovering high

in the thousand skies above your eyebrows?

Remember the day

we sat on your bed

in the room with the ashen, filmy presence of angels.

You lifted your heavy legs off the floor and proudly showed me your perfect, little supple toes. And it reminded me of a certain day in a hospital, in a foreign land, when my mother sat in a wheelchair

and all that was left of her were those toes of yours.

And I thought of all the women in our family

and how they endure

and how you endure

And how you wear small, white pearls on your neck of white-pink

And how when we walk together in intimate sunlight,

you lovingly point out the mint, parsley, and chamomile

growing amidst the grass, Allah’s soothing gift to us, you say

And how you pray

wrapped in softly woven white cotton

And how we know that the sky opens so He can hear

And how you comb my eyebrows with you fingers

unknotting the knots that live there

over and over again

tending me as a patient farmer tends a rough piece of earth

And how you gather your sons, daughters, and grandchildren

folding us inward into the same secret love,

which I keep rooted in my stomach.

The Glistening

There are mountains on this earth

that savor the sun at the end of day,

a sun drawn from the blurred bludgeoned

belly of the East,

spilling bleeding streaks of exile

across the rocks.

There are mountains on this earth

that breathe the white light of autumn

into hospitals

where the comfort of swollen strangers

is a reunion with love.

In the dark, worn-out night,

mountains drip secret layers of perfumed mist

into the cheeks of young girls

and the moon is a solitary man

who waits in anguish

for the unveiling of luminous violet courtyards hidden

just beneath the mountain tops.

Restless breathing mountains of the East

enclosed in swells of desert light

tumble down, like moving hymns

into the waiting lips of prayer-filled people

creating the giant hush

of an earthen resistance.

Bountiful mountains of the West

hum softly into blue slumber

and rise past the valleys strewn

with the roots of wide-eyed children

creating the deep gnawing of love,

a love which makes you want to leave your skin behind.

And where is that mountain of fire

the prophet prayed for

to separate Mecca from its enemies,

that yellow mountain, face of black,

meteor of heaven?

And where is that mountain

that will fold us inward slowly, that infinitely laboring

bald beautiful mountain,

enemy of melancholy, ally of life,

glistening darkly

in silence.

Breath

You come to me from the oldest wound of wind

traveling like a long breath across the globe

through the full July moon of a hundred sleepless nights

and centuries of dew.

You come to me from mountains

bathed by powerful musky angels

through the scarred throat of fog

and archways drizzled with twilight.

You come to me from minarets

rising smoothly from sky to sky

through voices of muezzins

and parched pilgrims.

You come to me in exile

from rows and rows of orange trees

rows and rows of olive trees

rows and rows of lemon trees

from the call to prayer at 5 a.m.

from spreading my fingers over the scars of apple trees

from the smell of sleepy earth in my love's hair

from hummingbirds that race into the buds of fuschia.

Not so long ago,

you showed me how the air grows soft when the sun crawls from rock to cloud.

Not so long ago,

you showed me the stillness of death.

And I would pray to everything sacred

and I would bow and stare deeply at the earth

and walk through old cemeteries to find the dead softly gazing.

Sometimes I see the beautiful broken fighter

and his lonely mother

and I see you breathe red poppies

over the hills in Palestine.

And I see girls with orchards of almond trees in their eyes

and old men strolling silently among fallen villages.

And I can't say how I love my people

and I can't tell my love how to leave our land without weeping

and I can't always love this land.

People who sit by the sea find you through the rough waters.

Others see you in the faraway crescent moon

only to find you breakfasting at their table.

Some yearn for years

and suddenly catch you in the deepest edges of their children's eyes.

Of the Fragile Hour in Between [For my grandmother, as she lay in a coma, in Gaza]

Of the Fragile Hour in Between

[For my grandmother, as she lay in a coma, in Gaza]