"Billowing" by Medina Tenour Whiteman ~ Lote Tree Press

“Billowing” by Medina Tenour Whiteman

Billowing

Medina Tenour Whiteman

With my son cradled

in sleep’s arm-boat

I switch my thoughts

from idle chatter to

Surat al-Ikhlas and feel my

being billow out

in gold embroidered

velvet.

We glide; a swell of

wonderment picks up,

impels our craft into the

surf and through,

aimed for our vanishing

point.

That is a moment’s

glimpse of one

momentous being who

never ceased to

surge into the Now,

setting a course by

stars embedded in his fabric.

This was a being who,

so inspired with all the

heavens’ breaths that there was

no room left in him for

anything earth-heavy.

On land, his wife had said he was

the Recitation walking;

out here, though, where

earth melts to water and

clouds sponge the

stars’ geometry to grey

there is no doubt

—the words he channelled

tidal in my chest—

that he, God’s peace and

blessings be with him,

is sailing.

This poem appears in Love is a Traveller and We are its Path by Medina Tenour Whiteman

“With Medina Whiteman’s lively, metamorphosing voice, we have here finely detailed poetic stances on whatever attracts her and her pen, and her heart is here, and its centripetal ripples edge out to our own world and wash over it as if with our own sensibilities — and it is a welcoming thing, a sweet and healing thing to know these enlightened trails.”

– Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore (Poet, Publisher)

“‘Love is a Traveller and We are Its Path’ is an astonishing, accomplished, heartbreakingly beautiful work. Ms. Whiteman writes as a girl, a woman, a mother, and a wide-eyed, reflective observer of her world — as seeker, believer and sage. For her God is truly in the details. Each observation, whether earthy or supernal, is internalized and suffused with a piercing awareness of meaning, and a deep, abiding faith that shines through a world full of mundane and transcendent particulars.”

– Michael Sugich (author of Signs on the Horizons)

Medina Tenour Whiteman is a British-American Muslim writer, poet and singer based near Granada in Spain. She is the author of the poetry collection Love is a Traveller and We Are Its Path (Ecstatic Exchange, 2016), Huma’s Travel Guide to Islamic Spain (2016), and The Invisible Muslim: Journeys Through Whiteness and Islam (Hurst, 2020). Her work has appeared on BBC Radio, Critical Muslim, Sacred Footsteps, Amaliah, and other international platforms, as well as being anthologised in A Kaleidoscope of Stories by Lote Tree Press (2020), The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human (2024), and Meanderings: Art, Ecology and Metaphysic (2024). She is cofounder of the Muslim Writers’ Salon and regularly holds creative writing workshops online and in person.