Khalid Mukhtar

Word, like wind, cuts through you / Withers all but true you

Poetry

In The Valley

· ·

He heard the good word, then took off his sandals
And silently stood there in awe
Of how came the order to throw down his staff;
And marveled to see what he saw:

What once was his staff now crawled in the dirt,
A serpent forbidding and frightful;
He turned on his heels and started to flee
For reasons immensely insightful.

Then came the command unexpected, it was
To stay and toward it draw near
To grasp it; he thrust down his hand in its jaws
Without any semblance of fear.

You know it behooves inquisitive minds
To ponder the reason just why
One settles to flee from peril, yet finds
Repose in instruction from high.

I hear it’s the wisdom of prophets to hold
Respect for the nature of things,
While knowing that nature obeys what it’s told
From where all of destiny springs.

“What is, is just not; what is not, then, is;”
Is everything this story brings.

Inspired by what I heard on November 23, 2014 at Darul Qasim’s weekly exegesis of the Quran by Shaykh Mohammed Amin Khowladia (Surah Al-Qasas, Session 5).

Homeward

· ·

I’m on my way towards my destiny,
And chance upon a verdant wooded land
With trees and lakes and endless shrubbery
That I must pass to reach to somewhere grand.

Each tree, each lake and every shrub within
Does bear a sign divine, or so inspired;
I’d gladly follow each but can’t begin,
For knowledge to divine them is required.

And then I come upon a glade from where
Four paths diverge, each splendid and well-trod,
And each takes from the wilderness its share
Of what is willed within the Will of God.

And while each path may help me ford a stream
Or get around a stubborn hill or two,
Each runs a course directed to redeem
The one who treads upon it soft and true.

Will I display my arrogance and shun
The labors those before me had begun,
Or will I choose to humbly choose a path
And stay upon it till my journey’s done?

The means are many, but the end is one.

Thursday Riddle (November 6, 2014)

· ·

Old Ebenezer can be quite distressing:
You take off his cloak, his coat and his shirts
And offer a tear to find it depressing
That Eb is more hidden with every undressing.

Baby on the Nile

· ·

This sonnet was inspired by an exegesis of the opening verses of Surah Al-Qasas (The Story). Shaykh Amin describes the inspiration sent to the pious mother of Musa (AS) as a profound allegory for parenting. 

There is something about a child, you know,
Something that makes all other pain seem less;
To hear the constant utterance of No
And find amorphous order in a mess.
I was a child once, more I set my thought
To drain the worlds of wisdom for a clue
To help me solve this mystery of what
Compels a child to do what children do.
And then I hear these words so sweet and sage:
Of how a mother nursed her infant, then
Set him afloat to cool a river’s rage;
I see my quest is drowned in error, when
Indeed somewhere between a kiss and shove
Lay hidden treasures of parental love.

And the following, in honor of the mother of Musa (AS).

The agents of the Pharaoh would
Be on her son in time,
What of this urge to nurse him good
With death upon the line?
She nursed him still, then heeded well
Another thought bizarre
To wrap the handsome, happy babe
And set him float afar.
Upon her peace, upon him too,
A prince who fled in fear
Into the wild, but only to
Return with word sincere
And lead his people out from where
A tyrant wrought his worst.
All from a mother’s act in faith
Upon a baby, nursed.

Thursday Riddle (October 30, 2014)

· ·

I hope you don’t mark me forgetful a man
For all of this tardiness is in my plan.
Four score and two thousand eight hundred is what
You must now resolve if you can.

Mother And Child

· ·

The silence of the man she loved
Said all she had to know:
No words could take her heart to where
It was destined to go.

With a faith that dwarfed the mountains
Rising all around her, she
Rose up from where her baby lay
With dust for company;

And she ran to the nearest hill she saw,
Climbed up and looked around
For the faintest sign of a caravan
Or a hint of the slightest sound,

Then down she ran and stopped a while
Where the baby kicked and cried
To rush up another hill that stood
Way off to the other side.

She peered again through the scorching heat
For the smallest sign of life,
Then on she ran with the firm and strong
Resolve of a prophet’s wife.

And thus she searched, and so she ran
Till her heels wept streams of blood,
As the infant cried and kicked the sand
When his heels discovered mud,

And the waters gushed and sprung up wild
While the mother rushed to her crying child;
How they washed themselves and drank their fill
And she nursed the babe till their hearts went still.

In the burning desolation
Of that strange and barren land,
Rose a faith that raised a nation
By this blessed mother and

Her child.