In the Rub’ al Khali

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1

You’ll want to cover yourself. The morning

cry from the muezzin strips the sky.

Ptolemy was first to reveal

the desert’s entry gate to the world,

calling Muscat, hidden harbor. You believe

all any person wants is to be seen,

but here you stand under the cloudless eye

and know how Eve and Adam felt—

sweet and tart fruit lashed their mouth,

transforming them: bare to exposed.

Wrap up your frankincense, your bridal chest

of meteor stones in layer after layer

of earthly cloth. When the day has glazed

you in its kiln, when you’re the only

vertical line crossing the horizon,

it’s a relief to kneel, drench your face

in fine red sand. Let’s feed each other

a bowl of dates, let’s build a courtyard garden

surrounded by high walls. Before the first prayer

ends and dawn blinds us with its charge,

let’s trap the darkness, Love,

hold all its stars under our shawls.

2

If satellites patrol our heaven,

if beetles leave encrypted tracks

around our sleeping mats

for a thousand mornings,

the ocean, if

you put your mouth

to me like a jellyfish,

like a diesel kiss, like I am

a bottle of well water,

if we crush each other,

like a reef whose happy ending

is to be reborn as dunes. Beloved

caravan, sweet eon, wind erosion—

If it hasn’t rained in years, we’ll live

on miraculous green shoots,

as when our vows were new.