For Abdul Rahim Ahmed Abdul Rahim Awad, Age 0
Often there is bone-trill in me When birds of prey near. Their wings Displacing air, the sound dopplered & trailing. Yesterday an eagle eight feet Over trail, apparition in heavy Cloud appertaining to pinnacle & peak. Briefly, a bolt of fear, shock Of my smallness. A landscape redolent With varied lives reduces yours Unto pinpoint, unto what I’d thought Of as almost disappearance. But That is the province of man. What is cyclical, Spurred by fecundity & churn, what Bears out the elemental, is beyond us. Our deaths at each other’s hands A mockery of the world’s need & hunger. We craft lives in which your name Erases with your small body. In which The elemental cedes to flimsy Inventories of meaning. Maybe yours Is a name iterative of its import, Abdul. Maybe repeated in its repeating The intransigence of life coupled With world, with world-awe, meaning Preceding all naming. May it, wordless, Sing your name this morning.