4. glenwood
in the dark lines of my palm

            my ancestors are with me

in everything I hold

            & everything I let go
                    burnt-sugar brown

arsenic	                   love by any other name

            eyes of glass

a snake winding across the sand

    carving treble clefs

                        into the land

ash from a funeral pyre

            a moth-wing petal

                        soft upon the hand
                        & when I awaken

            the tarmac is a rush of hot diamonds

in the road north from blacktown

            towards glenwood, where the golden domes

of the gurdwara glimmer dreamlike

                    through the grainy filter of dusk
charcoal skins & henna hands

I was born indian but raised nigerian, raised nigerian but

           educated british, educated british but certified australian

   (mera joota hai japani, et cetera)

                        I am a gordian knot

    of identities

           & I like it that way, but the gurbani always

 reminds me that these identities

                        do not quantify me nor qualify me

           or contain that which is within me
the gurdwara at glenwood is

            a dove, a quietude, a music. despite the hundred

or more people of all faiths

   gathering for the weekend langar, a stillness

& a silence pervades the space, a white lotus unfolding

                                       within us

    with a steady radiance that thrums & pulses. the low murmur

            of the granthi’s voice reading the sacred hymns

is as constant as the sound

    of the ocean, currents of light

                        transporting us to the centre of

            the great, throbbing blossoming

    at the core of us all 
I am not sikh but I

            know this song, have heard this song

resonating within the glass bowl of the sky

     at dawn
translations

mera joota hai japani: “my shoe is japanese,” a line from a classic bollywood song about an indian migrant

gurbani: the sacred hymns of sikhism

langar: a communal kitchen based in a gurdwara that serves free food to all in need, regardless of religion or caste

granthi: a ceremonial reader of the gurbani