Inspired by a visit to an adobe village in New Mexico.
My tribe-brother puts down his smartphone,
and hands me a gift, sharp-pointed, flaked with skill,
an arrowhead, holding
memories of a thousand generations.
I am a man young and strong,
urgent and proud. The pulse in me
speaks from my pre-human past,
the pulse of creation, giving daughters and sons.
I sit in the hall; my tribe-family enfolds me.
Our elder, the one who speaks the ancestors’ stories,
summons words of prayer
from cave-ancient times.
No longer young, nor am I wise enough yet
to know what I do not know; but
the pulse of prayer heals me anew,
the lessons of pain dissolved by love.
One day may I rest
as dust, as zikr and Light,
beyond memories deep, with
all the illuminated souls, as ‘I’
dissolves in the pulse of the One.
Aziz Dixon lives in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, and recently launched his most recent collection of poems at the Burnley Literary Festival. Edmundazizdixon@gmail.com.
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