Shahada أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّٰهُ The Shahada There is no god but God – the very words I was thinking early that February morning, the day after I got my diagnosis. And though those words didn’t actually cure my cancer, they did shift reality enough to let a little divine light in with the dawn. Nobody I know gets up as early as I do. I like to believe the universe is working like a mill wheel when we’re not watching, and dawn is part of that. And though my peace of mind may not depend on the time of day, I am fond of the early morning – it holds such promise. This universe we inhabit propels us into the future according to its law. The sand is like a living thing. Along the winding dunes, the windward and the lee redraw their maps, and over them, as if a mist, the sand is dancing. Walk awhile – the sand shifts underfoot, and overhead, the sun is high. Now, you can ride the sand: you’ll gaze out at the endless dunes. A soul might lose itself. Here, every grain you see is placed just where it is, it is recorded. Today, we walked the sands. And when we came to sunset and the evening prayer, we sat to break our fast. A man whirled on a stage. We spoke of holy things and not so holy, of those we’ve lost, of how life has its end. A soul makes choices in the world: the world is very large, and we are small in it. Small as a distant star to light the night. Small as a grain of sand the wind has caught.
John Claiborne Isbell taught French and German for many years in Indiana and Texas after his Ph.D. at Cambridge University. In 1996, he appeared in Who’s Who in the World. He has a new monograph, An Outline of Romanticism in the West, with Open Book Publishers, where it is available to download for free online. His first book of poetry, Allegro, came out in 2018.
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