The Baobab

All are in repose.

"Under the Boabob Tree" by artist, Carol Howard, Photography

Reddening sun sinks under the will of the earth,
Melodiously drowning into the molten horizon.
My heart gasps in harmony,

“Take me with you.”

Long and low, the shadows of the ancient baobab tree
Yawn and crawl toward the east.
The Baobab, two thousand years older than the father of Qasim,
Says, “I have seen some things; I have felt the slow hand
of many a weary wanderer. ”

These dendritic trees are upside down,
their roots suspended 10 meters up in the Saharan air
cylindrical trunks plunging down, down
into the throat of the earth.

Lions with bellies swollen, roll over in a heap
Exhaling the scent of steaming meat, sweeter than the baobab flower.
Whiskers stained red with blood are tended to by busying flies
They slumber, claws retracted and kneading through lion dreams.

Sated and in repose, the blood is too busy in my belly;
dreams, come without words to carry their ardent meanings.
So that any beings with a tranquil heart and absent mind
Are free to drum with Jilbran and Bayazid.

A Hundred Ways

A hundred ways
to remember the nameless,
stand between the seeker
and that one never to forget.

Ninety-nine abandoned attributes
linger in the faint attar of imbued nostalgia,
wrenched in the twist
of the implacable iron wood.

The variegated visage of the beloved
dissolves within distraction,
revealing the empty path of veracity
to maundering mendicants.

These, collecting the dust of true essence
on the trailing skirts of their khirqas.
Lives bead and flow down a pillar of paraffin
Rendered free by the heat of a flame
Dancing wild on the tip of a wick.

Lovers come undone;
Into river runs of melted awareness,
convening at the coast of consciousness.

Surrendering to the sea
Where seven continents of meaning marry.