MARCH/APRIL 2008
Garland
The mala around your wrist is meant
to remind you to go back to the stone-year.
When you were cold, locked out,
cocooned, no one called.
Tone deaf and friendless, you decided:
less collage, more song.
More song meant you got limber,
abandoned the agreed-upon ocean.
You remember it as difficult,
but that part was easy.
If time can unmoor itself and cast off
so can you—
About the Author
Kazim Ali is the author of two books of poetry, The Far Mosque and The Fortieth Day, a novel. He teaches at Oberlin College and the University of Southern Maine.
