In a desert midnight no darker than dawn
With cloudless heavens evident and stretching
To the edges of Bedouins’ minds and ours
Where owls govern with Your permission

You plunged a mighty fist deep
Into the heart and gripped a molten rag
And pulled it into a peak of crags
In which the **** You wanted grew

With a rush of wind you shaped that
Tear into a world-sized hollow to shelter
A man and a starfilled future for any who
Might accept what tugged at him that night

You once said Be! and time commenced
But earlier you had chosen from first
Until final a stream of Rusul and You placed
In that cleft the last Rasul alone but never

And in the radiance of a challenging word
Your spirit whose wings dripped pearls
Asked the silent one who sailed in prayer
To revolve the world on a different axis

Running feet across the earth carried him
To the comfort of arms that felt a beating
Chest bursting with ten million truths and her
Assurances trounced the whisperer’s last ditch

Words of mercy flow around us through a gentle
Heart in a stone cavity in the shade of a night
Without shadows beneath a cloudless cover
Which owls rule ... for a shrinking time