Bedien

Without this Earth’s dust
the early moon rise
would lack its rawness,
its red reality that reminds me
of the Afrikaans prayer
I picked up on the beach
this afternoon, expecting trash
before being taught again
about all the ways we are
connected, caught reflecting
in a gravity pool, ground down
to simple grains by grace,
and what grows even
in the tongue used to divide
our blood-lined histories.

The dīn has come back,
transaction translated in action
to repeat those old words
and show how dīn and dien
both serve the same meaning,
the same deep moonlight,
an endless music we didn’t make up:
the old chords, a sacred key,
a strange pitch playing out at sea.

Our place just to witness
how Xanadu has seven garages
in this town of coral trees
and fig creepers,
all the silly signs of a singer
not at all concerned
with being found out,
fumbling in the moonlight
with a bowl of day-old cauliflower
carried to another dinner
with our kin.

TRACE

The actual prayer I thought was trash.

Surat At-Tin (The Fig)

“Dīn”. “Dien” means “serve” in Afrikaans.

Coleridge or Nelson?