For Bilal Mohammed Kamal Hamdan, Age 0

 

See how it works, Bilal? I will

Try salvage slivered beauty from 

The extant world, find the burr 

In whorl of unbroken fingerprint. 

I have only the mineral world

Unadorned with need of metaphor–

Incapable of gyring unto balance,

Harmonized calamity, or calumny

Come manifest. It is yours. 

Your family’s. I keen like tern

Sheers over ocean but cannot

Alight on any branch you see. 

Do I let my stranger’s grief colonize

Your dying this way, Bilal? 

There is nothing in it of possession.

I see capillary wave, pulse of 

Torsion spilling shores. I hear

Echo, ripple muted. I think 

Of rhizomes humming underfoot

& want our surging histories

Entangled that way– not in periodic

Stuttering patterns of bomb-fall

& rimfire– in our thrumming instead,

Our vital animal yearning. Could

I clasp your hand under-soil, where

Root ends & the world begins

Under bannered names anew? 

I sing your name this morning,

My fingernails clutched beneath

The humus & hoping. A feather

In a trail waving like a flag.

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