Poet Bilal Hafeez’s tremendous piece “Catching My Breath” is a luminous work woven with yellow threads of sunshine and impermanence. Bilal writes of the sights, sounds, recollections, and experiences of his family in Punjab, Pakistan, just southwest of the lofty Himalayas. He informed The Dewdrop, “[‘Catching My Breath’] is inspired by the beautiful mustard fields in the Punjab, and the power of insight into impermanence, coming out on the other side wiser, more compassionate, and more equanimous.”
Catching My Breath
I once crossed a pond with a dying mustard flower,
and it began to fall through my hands.
It told me to hold it up, to bid farewell to the Sun.
My arm raised the flower to the heavens,
and, thus, a curiosity splashed the canvas of the sky.
Now, rising before me, a silhouette crystallized,
the Sun’s glare darkened flower and forearm,
fossilized together, a shining shadow,
blackened pillar with a petaling peak,
eclipsing the sky.
So then my arm died too, and the flower still lives on,
or perhaps neither of those happened,
and I simply breathed,
knowing…
Bilal Hafeez
Bilal Hafeez (he/him) is an aspiring religious studies scholar, focusing on interfaith work and comparative religious studies. He has formally studied Twelver Shi’ism in a seminary setting and intends to further his studies of religion in Shi’ism and Buddhism in the near future. He aims at weaving the languages of Islam and Buddhism into the stream towards Nirvana through poetry, grassroots efforts, and integrated spiritual practice. He is based in Long Island, New York and Gujrat, Pakistan. He wishes to find the spiritual spark contained in the soil of Punjab, a land that contains such sites of recollection as the Gandharan ruins, Bibi Pak Daman, and the Golden Temple.
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