Pursuits of Common Paradise

By Jai Hamid Bashir

If you speak the shahada before you die, you enter

into paradise. Sunken sins are made clean

and private as the transgressions never shared. What a blessing

it would be to keep pulling rough eternity

from weeds. I’d awaken on a farmland wrestling

in morning’s becoming. Wringing curled breaths

to give resonance to all things. I’d remain

forgiven through the roads that came before. Bluedark

would signal to clap my hands

of the riches of rich soil and soft bread—

and to return for the night. I’d give in

to this eternal now. Reading the same book in bed. To whisper

my private epiphanies as if they were gifted

from the pink fevers of nestlings. What desire?

Other than the smooth gossip of orchard-lined air?

The sun: as if Icarus had been a painter searching for yellow

of daystar daily. Our shadows still staining sacred

rented wallpaper. Bells calling out angels that ring and ring;

we would elect deafness. To sleep in the grass. Tender fist of tulips

we knew as both cyclic and impermanent. Hawks take back the air—

in dens dewy-eyed kits, grow soft black socks,

fill fevered throats with mother’s milk. What if our names

are our common shahada? How I say what I believe

in the divinity of love. I will touch

our life with the brave slowness of giving yourself

to an animal; your scent is enough to know.

 

Jai Hamid Bashir is a second- generation Pakistani-American artist, educator, and environmentalist.  She is an MFA candidate at Columbia University where she was awarded the Linda Corrente Poetry Fellowship.