Sonnet

Some days when grief arrives in all its grays
When every flower in your garden dries
When laughter doesn’t burst with golden rays
And all the rains seem dammed up in your eyes
Go find yourself a rock to sit upon
To let your worries float upon a breeze
(If you can do this near the break of dawn
Around when dew has washed the tops of leaves)
Then coax your heart to journey back instead
To when a sad unbroken man sat down
To cleanse his sandals overcome with red
Derided, scorned and driven out of town
    Take heart from him and dry your tears friend.
    He is a rahmah to you till the end

There’s a pumpkin seed here in my mouth
And it’s been all over I tell you
To the west and the east and the south
But it can’t scale the walls of hell. You
Can unleash the precision of teeth
You can buffer the motions of tongue
You can coax it to submit beneath
All the pressure from traps that you’ve sprung
Till the hull comes apart at the seam
And the kernel slips out in the open
As unbroken and green as a dream
If you like pumpkin seeds I’m hopin’
Ask the folks of the kernel about
Their reflections on getting it out

Sometimes our search for answers leads us to
A clearing where answers do not live
We’re not to live there either, pass on through
To see what gifts the wilderness may give
This forest we call life is not so bad
The trees are there so we may find our way
To  lie beside the river and be glad
Ingratitude will certainly delay
Our quest You see the answer may not come
As sweetly as a flower on a stalk
But rather as a dusty path that some
Old seeker must have chosen for a walk
As long as we keep walking we are blessed
Because the answer’s built into the quest

I often say I’m grateful but I think
The act of saying so acts like a charm
See all I want to say is that I’m glad
But “gratitude” can ward away the harm
If I were truly grateful for a thing
I’d fall upon my face and offer thanks
I wouldn’t find the time or rhyme to bring
Myself to publicize the sentiment
But on and on I go about how kind
The Lord has been to me in every way
While I am, simply said, out of my mind
With happiness, but don’t know how to say
  I’m just a self-absorbed and petty lad
  Who likes to say he’s grateful when he’s glad

A lot of things are said about respect
And all of its effects upon your heart
That beats a path to waters that reflect
The visage of your soul once you depart
Sometimes it means to rise from where you sit
To be, with the angelic order, one
Sometimes it means to let another spit
The final word and still your burning tongue
It means to let a rumor starve and die
Appoint your heart above what’s in your head
To weigh the need to ask the how and why
And leave unsaid what’s better left unsaid
        Respect: it is the currency of souls
        The passage widens once you pay the tolls

You tell me that I use a word too many
But words are much like colors, don’t you see
How pleased or how offended we’re by any
Diverging value or intensity
You paint a wall a certain shade of sky
Alaskan, Early Morn or Shooting Star
They’re blue if you just plan on getting by
But color-wise you won’t go very far
So when I use a hundred words to say
What you think just requires twenty five
You’ve only heard the quarter of a gray
That I relayed four times intensified
    Our wordiness is hard on one who rues
    The value and intensity of hues

The scholars give their volumes up to hear
The warriors their arms that they may touch
The children all their toys to just be near
This man. No man was ever loved so much.
And now ‘Adiyy bin Hātim son of Tayy
Of line defining generosity
Found himself in Madinah standing by
A grandmother who kept his company
He watched him standing on the dusty way
Conversing with that frailness bent with years
Unhastening despite the long delay
Attending reassuring calming fears
‘Adiyy received more than he ever gave
Came looking for a king and found a slave

When we consider generosity,
We think of those possessed of wealth and time
Who give with or without the vanity
That often taints a gift with hues of crime.
And then we hear the term afresh from those
Who saw its splendor in prophetic light,
For giving matters when the giver knows
The value of what’s given, all despite
The ignorance and bliss ingratitude
Of them who walk the earth in heedlessness
While harvesting the riches that accrued
Upon the breaths of those who do with less.
SubhanAllah is charity that turns
The world despite the punishment it earns.