Blue Mosque

The flight of the birds, a thread winding home
to its spool, pulls my gaze to the mosque. The tiles,
once a mirror to the sky, are gone, exiled.
Flown off in the way of sparrows who come

and go. Women walk in chador, skirts swinging;
they wind and unwind through these hollow spaces,
sit behind a wall, under veils hide their faces.
Every evening, a man calls all to prayer, singing.

Allaho akbar, none are greater than God.
We call your name to the skies. Still days unfold
countless as sparrows rising, while winds gust

and gather the women's skirts, and old men plod
in worn shoes past this weathered rock, retold,
as stories are, into stone, earth, and dust.