Traveling with the Speed of Light
News from Damascus scrolls on TV,
a morning chat with a friend just home
from work, seven hours in the future.
My hands can almost touch the cyclamen
on West Bank hills, as if tending flowers
in my backyard. The corniche road
winding around Beirut’s tip hugging
the sea, so close to my doorstep.
As world wanderers we click on screens,
sift symbols, look with sister eyes
in oval lenses of intersecting circles,
the radius of the voyage invisible.
Stories between ethereal mouths and
ears, voices in bits and bytes penetrate
thick mountains, deserts. We measure
epiphanies in seconds, move on,
leave unintended footprints:
there are dreams of tented trysts,
shards of conversations, mistakes—
maybe second thoughts—deleted.
Like dense coffee grounds lining once
welcoming cups, or small bowls of dull
olive pits, a sadness. Only scintillas
of thoughts linger, a salty taste in memory.
Now in Washington a white moon blooms
while the sun throws rays on Jerusalem
and Amman…and this luminous language
of loving: imaginary lines around the globe,
a curving cage of messages at the speed
of light. We reach out, draw in, close as
the space between fingers on a keyboard,
far as the great meridian from pole to pole.
Copyright © Zeina Azzam 2018
Zeina Azzam works as publications editor for the think tank, Arab Center Washington. She volunteers for organizations that promote Palestinian human rights and civil rights of minorities in Alexandria, VA, where she lives. Zeina’s poems have been published in Mizna, Sukoon Magazine, Split This Rock, Heartwood Literary Magazine, Lunch Ticket, The Fourth River, and five anthologies. She holds an M.A. in Arabic literature.
30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review
“Now in Washington a white moon blooms”
This poem made me tear up. ZEINA AZZAM gives much light from that moon in Washington.
Thank you for your words, Grace! They mean so much to me.
Love to you,
Zeina
Beautiful. Rare.
thank you!
Very moving.
thank you.
This is gorgeous! And I agree with what others have said. Moving.
Thank you so much, Sally!
I have concerns about intended footprints, too. May the “luminous language of loving” speak out through “fingers on a keyboard…from pole to pole” and through this powerful poem that invites us to view Beirut’s “corniche road winding” as “close to my doorstep”. For world-event epiphanies to last more than seconds, we each need this perspective. Thank you for sharing.
I appreciate your sensitive response, Joy. Thank you for reading my poem meaningfully, and for “getting it”!