The Sound Of The Five Fingers

for Hamza-el Din

The matchless form of existence: gentle unspectacular exchange,

cluster of grapes, traded for a piece bread, between four hands, under the shade of a tree.

Each bound for a different destination. Both experiencing hunger in the same moment, reaching

into the bundles we carry, finding small food. Unalike. Related.

You told us life has no address. Bird seed is scattered near and far.

Claim no bush or branch. When hard pressed, drink your own tears, or drip.

Salt drives the dye into our clothes; clothes that will soften, bleach in sunlight,

even be blessed by small jaws of hungry young moths that come

to eat the wool of our tent, the blanket on our grandmother’s lap.

Smile and feed this small spirit too.

Begrudge no one their meal. Feed all places. Look through the hole in your garment. 

Be grateful your coat has such wear; look forward. People! 

Singing, minding their own, in such a way as to share what things are at hand, 

with the small, at hand, things of others. No material gifts need be given.

True gifts are loaned or traded. The first library was a song.

Hamza, your name: the name of five fingers; the name of emotional sound,

transparent silk floats about and around our entire world.

An oud, her instrumental neck, learning back, toward you, a daughter that leans back 

into her father, at the approach of strangers, the world; daughter, growing 

safely within the familiar smell of her father’s sweat.

After he slows and ceases this day’s work, father sits, to give us a story.

We don’t wander from the sound of that voice. We have everything.

Once, some confusers came and insisted we buy their wares. You scratched your head.

You sang them a song. In so doing, you paid them to leave. 

We did not need anything they were selling. May they prosper in other ways.

True wealth, the love of someone who patiently plucks arils from the pomegranate, for you,

places them in a bowl; more useful and instantaneously glorious than rubies.

True wealth, someone, with their own patience, filling a small bowl of pomegranate arils 

for themselves, admiring red kernels for a time, before eating them, alone, quietly.

You have so many teeth. So many toes and fingers, abundant dark hairs on your head. 

Your lute, ten strings, all resonating actions, arranging themselves in waves.

You, wise to know, the ways, earnest and simple, of a life, complex. You tell us:

Listen to the song of the plough, be keen in listening, absorb the scrape of the blade 

pulling past dry earth above, into the wetter earth below. Hear the damp richness.

Smell the sound. Smelling and hearing with our hearts, minds and stomachs, we are fed.

Listen, listen, you tell us, with little emotion on your face; still awareness that knows.

The first songs are learned from flies buzzing. From cows that exhale. First practitioners.

Many hours, days and years of heedful listening to this, will stir red golden broth. Inner Tea.

Sit now. Hear. Wander, periodically sitting: always hearing. 

Learning to walk and hear. Learning to sit and hear. Learning to sleep, and hear.