As humans we have so many things to look after – our nails – our hair –
                our hearts – our transcendent souls –
We file our nails – we cut our hair – we fall in love or find the true object
                of the love of our resplendent souls –

A camel stands in silhouette in moonlight on a desert horizon – majestic
               and nobly still –
The whole scene taken in by our eyes of love – ancient dimension of our
               luminescent souls!

I see you over the wall in your garden so tenderly tending your red and
                yellow roses –
You move so slowly you might be a ghost – the most vivid thing your
                 bright quiescent soul

If we veer too far to the left we might founder – if we veer too far to the
                 right we might turn to stone –
The frenzy of movement from side to side is the wild animal of our
                 adolescent souls –

I just ate an animal cracker from the bag – it’s hard to tell what it is – it
                might be a horse –
The fuzzy and insecure outlines of so many folk show the sad sinking of
                deeply depressant souls

The door opens and light pours in – in a flash we’re past gross physical
               being and gone –
Our own outlines disappear altogether engulfed by our death-angel’s
               incandescent soul

O heart – lift up your sleepy eyelids and look out through the darkling
                trees.
Wildflowers burst into firework blooms of your efflorescent soul!

Dive down Ameen – through air earth and water – pass through infernos
               of fire!
In the depths where sunlight rarely falls – you’ll find your original
                opalescent soul!

From the poetry collection The Flame of Transformation Turns to Light, Ninety-Nine Ghazals Written in English by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore (1940-2016, rahimahullah) was a pioneering American Beat-turned-Sufi poet. He authored dozens of poetry collections, in his own ecstatic, thoughtful, and often witty style, fusing Romantic, Surrealist and Sufi influences. Abdal-Hayy’s oeuvre spans sonnets, ghazals, and free verse, covering themes from family, love, death and nature to Mawlid, Hajj, Ramadan, prophets and saints, and more. His poems are a deeply personal prayer and reflection on the Divine perceivable in the everyday. In 2023, the publishing company he founded, The Ecstatic Exchange, published From a Shore Beyond Water: Selected Poems of Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore.