Every place I’ve ever prayed
– four wall frames for this
absorbing act of art
marking the spot where
the Beautiful appears
in hearts turned clear as
glass with love –
are, if I conjure them
in qiyam, visible again
overlaid: same qibla,
same calm.
The world aligns
these scattered squares
landscape provided by
the odd park, forest floor
or mountain slope
that ever served
as mosque
while depth is added by those
few times overall I prayed jama’
one stroke of paint in ruku’, a
Van Gogh of backs and heads.
This is just the same
place, call it here or there.
Even though the compass
needle’s moved
from Spain to India
Turkey, London
Washington, Mombasa
my feet haven’t changed;
my head still weighs the same.
So is there, in the same way
there is only now and no past
left, no future yet to be
no here, either?
No North or South
or East or West
no close to home
or far-flung nation
to judge one to be
God’s homeland
visas rubber-stamped by
angels, everywhere else
a plane ride’s reach
from the Real?
The scenery’s been changed
but this stage has
gone nowhere.
So many earths have crept
beneath my soles and yet
the solid rock beneath my brow
is deep as ever, the
plunging in always the timeless
spaceless swim it ever was
wherever it has been.
With every rak’ah
the archived frames return
mirrored around
reflecting out
while I sit here
reflecting in.