My brother Hamza tells me his dream
this morning: our group is on a bus.
We are separated by gender,
like worshippers in a mosque.
The bus is stopped at a border crossing
while our papers are examined.
The bus is made of stone.

Almost every day we have been
riding buses or airplanes. Almost every day
we have entered mosques, tombs, caves
of stone. We are light
contained in vessels,
we are animals in the ark, and the ark
is the heart of our teacher. Our journey
is a pilgrimage to the light in our own hearts.

Light pours from the opening
at the top of the lofty dome
to the central fountain, where
the worshippers wash themselves
before the prayer. As pilgrims, we travel
for days to reach this place, this place
that is always inside us.

There is no one
except the One,
all Gracious, all Merciful.
There is nowhere to go:
all rests in the heart of the Beloved.
Yet we come and go,
gathering our packs and
bags and water bottles,
leaving the plane to board another bus,
straggling through bazaars and ruins,
gathering to sing and pray in tombs.
Are we all here?

We love cherry juice and prayer beads,
we love to kiss and swim and laugh.
We forget things and have to go back.
We praise and fall into ecstasy...
we must stop to eat again, buy more water,
pay to use stinking toilets.
We find perfect apricots and roses.
We have become a family, kissing
brothers and sisters whose language
we cannot speak, and understanding
them perfectly, kissing the marble biers
and fragrant grave cloths of the
illuminated dead.

Illa Allah: there is only God,
a single being, a single moment,
an infinite shimmering lattice of light...
This ecstasy subsides as the next meal
is served: again there is an outside
and an inside, hunger, thirst, and
gratitude for bread, olives, tomatoes,
and lamb. Those who are created
are in need, and most of all they need
my prayers. I live on their prayers
and on the bounty of their fields,
orchards, and flocks.
Please bring me
another glass of tea
and sugar. I will pray for you.

There is nowhere to go, and no separation,
and yet I weep as we fly away from Turkey.

- Rafi Wright