Each is trying to write a poem. Their minds must have something there. After all the malls they’ve shopped at. Sugary drinks drank until mouths were numb. And of course, watched movies and read books until they were living elsewhere. And looking around the messy house. A rainy gray day. There was nothing to do but to write poetry. The sort that has to be lifted with whatever rusty tweezers are at the bottom of the drawer. These minds have experienced beauty too. Smelled a fresh forest for a few seconds before the sound of voices and fried food disturbed that silence. Oh, and those twenty minutes at the masjid, when there were no worshipers in the late afternoon. There was quietness. And letting as the heat close in, the words eventually made sense: By the dawn, and the ten nights, the odd and the even, the night as it passes…  ¶ 7/29/2005 10:46:00 AM