for Sharifa Barakat
Headache, the invalid feeling of being sickly and having to
take it easy, testiness when
things don’t go quite
right, annoyance of magnetic
gravity, things
fall in a pile or
slide off an incline – not the
hunger alone that binds us in brotherhood ultimately with
hollow-eyed Ethiopians of
this and all other eras,
but the frailty, the passing alone down the
alien corridors of this world that is such a
poignant reminder to us, so that in our
momentary physiological grayness
when the food finally comes showering at the
end of the fast and turns all things back to
Technicolor again, and we feel
the old soft-shoe lightness in our step again and the
old brightness in our smile,
the cornucopia dome of the sky turned
earthward again, the arid stretch
suddenly fertile, fruits and
flowers as if by
cinematic magic fill our
perceptions, the
floodgate of generosity opened to the
full, then our
body-bound, sense-imprisoned
selves expand past identity with one
hollow-pitted stomach dusty in the
hot rays of a pitiless sun
to a non-entity whose single characteristic is
gratitude and whose
every pulse is animated by the
Single Provider of all this
and every life’s
provision.
Visit Daniel’s web site.
