Wadi Hanifa

FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES

There are acquaintances at work and at the bar where the talk is mostly cheap.  And there are friends with whom I converse without speaking. 

A Bangladeshi man refused to proceed on his bicycle through the intersection, even though I waved him on, even though I was driving.  He is my friend. 

A dove made a nest in a niche between the kitchen window and a wooden shudder.  Every time I wash dishes, she stares at me with splendid indifference. 

There is a man from Pakistan who waters pink bougainvilleas and palm trees from a tanker truck.  I can’t speak his language, but when I wave and call him “Sir”, he smiles.      

The Iraqi bulbuls are my friends.  My sister said they are wonderfully fervent birds, so much so that if you sit long enough in the park they will try to land on your head. 

I have a friend from Arabia.  From within her niqab, she speaks to me about gratitude, how she is grateful to breathe every day.  How she is grateful to dream every night, even though some can never come true.  

Bulbul

“There’s light, we learn, and there’s Light.  To do what you have to do – unrecognized – and for no one.  The language in that is small, sewn just under your skin.  The heron pivots, stretches his neck.  He hears what we do not hear, he sees what we’re missing.”

            -from the poem “Cake Walk” by Charles Wright