The imam of our mosque has the curious habit

of arriving on horseback

 

except that he hasn’t got a horse so he makes those

Monty Python clippity-clop sounds with his tongue

and insists on dismounting just outside the

 

mosque door giving the invisible reins to one of the

kufi’d and robed boys to look after during his

Khutba

 

It wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t neigh very loudly

during the first half and make that

 

blubbery mouth sound during the second

 

One Friday he came as a goldfish in a bowl

and gave his sermon from the steps of the mimbar with the

 

microphone right up against the glass

which was all right until it came

 

time to do the prayer and we couldn’t tell

when he was in sajda

 

One Friday he came as a swarm of bees through the

side window and swarmed onto the wooden sides of the

 

mimbar so loudly we could hardly hear his words

for the magnificence of his buzzing

 

Once he came as a penguin

and the Mosque Committee welcomed him all

 

dressed in their tuxes with their

hands behind their backs and their ties askew

 

and he managed to weave into his sermon

various exotic Antarctic experiences and the long hours spent

 

incubating his wife’s egg under his feet

 

A trapeze artists a vase of flowers a

sea wave sloshing back and forth in a tank

 

even once as a minor earthquake and then

with his spectacles tilted on his nose and the shakes of the

aftershocks evident in his twitches he told of the

 

mysteries at the center of the earth to which we are

normally not privy except through his kind of mouthpiece

 

Next week he’s coming as the Spiral Galaxy

which should be illuminating and we’ve

 

vacuumed and painted the walls so the increased

light given off by it sun and planets won’t show the bad

 

stains and cracks that have come from our

sins supplications and above all negligence

 

And when he comes next month as the cries of a distant shepherd

calling his sheep I hope we’ll behave

 

well enough to benefit from his care and his crook

to not wander as wantonly over the pastures and hills

 

but arrive safely under God’s

bright blue sky in the open air

 

 

–Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore