Ghazals by Former Students

Here a few ghazals by former students. You can find out more about ghazals here.

Lighter Than Expected
by Sarah Hea

Every day should be like running on mattresses—
the sudden joy of being lighter than you expected.

I wonder what it would be like to walk on the moon,
to be lighter than air, to fly!

Did those men feel sad when they came back to earth
to have gravity thrust back upon them?

I saw an angel singing maple syrup melodies to heaven.
Her wings were attached to the spine of her book.

A little girl stands on the window sill, her body perfectly framed,
singing secret refrains to the silent sun.

Sometimes through windows we see cars driving over roofs,
bedroom lights in winter trees!

Sometimes we caress the arms of chairs with the same tenderness
as we might touch the arm of our Beloved.

What about a baby’s first breath? That cold sharp air!
How could a baby not miss the amniotic fluid?

Are we all trying to get back to where we came from?
Once we feel light, do we ever stop wanting the sun?

Ghazal
by Justin Lorenzon

Nighttime has swept the noise from the sky,
revealed the truth of a thousand silent stars.

They hold secrets as they stand and stare down
at me as I stand and stare up,

and the earth quietly continues revolving
without a sound.

Morning will come, dawn smiling on the pale horizon.
The sight of her pale arms will warm the still sky to flushed excitement.

Birds will caress the awakening air with their silver throats,
singing songs distilled from the stillness of daybreak—

songs like the soft laughs that exist only in the inch between
the lips of a lover and the ear of their love.

Midday will come, the sun smiling resplendent in its fierce gold
as clouds drift past in their stately procession from nowhere to nothingness.

The birds will chase each other around the clouds’ feet
like squealing, chattering children in a street parade,

and silence will retreat to the empty spaces between the leaves of trees
and the tiny spaces between the words we speak.

Evening will come, a soft hand attempting to hush the world with purples and greys,
and lay softly abed the sated things of the day.

As the first star in the east emerges from behind dusk’s dusty curtains,
the crickets in grassy gloom will ready their strings and feelers

and they will strike up their nightly, exultant, improvised composition
of hidden jazz, soul solos and classical, night-struck arabesques.

The speechless full moon comes out now
couched in the inconceivable sky.

She takes my head in both hands
and kisses me full on my upturned face

while the earth quietly continues revolving
without a sound.

Sea-Worthy
by Samantha Kelly

In my stomach an ocean rumbles, searching for the shore.
My ribcage is a coral reef for brightly colored fish.

My skull is a cave in which notions swim and play.
My brain is the flower of the sea.

My blood is a flood through rivers and creeks.
My heart is the port where vein vessels meet.

When I bleed, my platelets go on shore leave.
Leukocyte soldiers celebrate victory over death and disease.

Inspiration comes in waves that ebb and flow along the shore of my soul;
Imagination runs naked on the beach.

Self-doubt is a shabby condominium built on sacred land.
Sell-out is an ignorant tourist who burns before she tans.

My eyes are sponges; when they are saturated, I cry.
My tears are governed by the pull of the tide.

Life is a sandcastle built by god and me.
Death is the miracle of all things returning to the sea.

Ghazal
by Christi Kern Stone

touched by each gentle pulse
pulled by the swell of the tide

taken farther and farther from shore
without fear of drowning

i am a fish, a dolphin, a bit of seaweed
i am a man, a woman, a child

drinking the sun
i float face up, toenails stained

with the red dirt of far away places
i am small and alive, greedy for god

i am coming to that place which was
not meant to be seen when time existed