the line between dreams
  and wakefulness is          thin,

in Ghanam North.
before me, the landscape rogue without
heat lays naked, ash-lorn-true all around;

cold pure, and air distilled
night keen with its eyes strobe around
  revealing drowned pine.

the wall between the living
   and the dead is              frail.

the diaspora trace through names
  what is retained: vestigial, frightful;
   a stone’s throw at the nearby mosque
  crying in prayer, bellowing through the ashen
     quadrangle, a dazed interlocutor.

moving past things unmoving.
the astragalus feels the slow tumult,
   silence as remnant, trilling,
                                     free, carrying a message,
         *Ta’ala.