Gacela For Day’s End

~ in praise of soft goodbyes ~

Image Pixabay

“A Gacela is a Spanish version of a Ghazal, which is a form of Arabic verse concerned with mourning, loss, and romantic love.”

My mother was a poet too. She wrote many Urdu Ghazals — I grew up with the form. Structure of a Ghazal is rhyme but mine are Ghazals in spirit only.

When faith

becomes a baritone poignancy

that smolders like ferment

inside a dark bottle,

and prescient eyes a curse,

when smiles give only black

and winds move Holy Book

heavens out of reach,

when you know Ophelia lives

inside every woman,

and Sisyphus in the house

on the hill,

when the cohort sadness

of ex votos

that cannot succor

barren wombs

flutters in an indifferent wind,

then come to me,

and we will dream of Paganini…

A vaulted chamber

rinsed with amber,