Wonders of the World: Enchanted Buddha Fish Sing a Song of Purple, by Karima Diane Alavi

Tham Pla Fish Cave, Mae Hong Son, Thailand, photography by icon0, contemporary CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)

Wonders of the World: Enchanted Buddha Fish Sing a Song of Purple 
 
So I’m standing in front of the Buddhist Master
who’s ignoring me
because he’s sitting in a cave
draped in lion skin, and made of stone
 
But that’s okay
 
Because the stream surrounding him 
is filled with fish-gods who shimmer 
beneath the splendor of an autumn light
drawing each moment into the mist of their water-shadows.
 
Across the river an ancient monk meanders along a bridge
its wooden planks drawing deep breaths each time he warns
that there are ghosts wandering the bamboo groves
 
And my son moves to my side
to gaze into the cosmos spinning beneath us   
silken veils of blue, green, yellow, white 
centered by a glow 
soft as the moon halfway through its midnight journey
 
Which causes me to wonder if it’ll be dark 
by the time we get on the Harley and ride down this mountain
 
But that doesn’t matter 
as much as the fact that right now
flames are devouring the jungle
we’ll soon be driving through
and we don’t even know it yet.
 
My eyes drift back to the fish
but the moment I turn they swirl toward panic,
reversing direction in one swift movement 
their scales embracing the shape of a golden leaf
before their neon blue descends toward the sorrow of purple
 
and I toss them a piece of bread 
while asking them out loud 
 
Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?

Karima Diane Alavi 

As a graduate student, Karima Alavi received a scholarship to study language, history, and art in Iran. After completing her Master’s degree in Middle East and Asian Studies in the U.S. she returned to Iran to teach. She later taught Middle East Studies at Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C., and most recently taught Humanities, Art History, and Creative Writing at the New Mexico School for the Arts in Santa Fe.  Karima moved to New Mexico to serve as director of the Dar al Islam Teachers’ Institute on ‘Understanding and Teaching about Islam.’ Her short stories have appeared on National Public Radio (All Things Considered), in Sufi Magazine, Voices of Islam, and online journals such as the Santa Fe Writers Project, Glint Literary Journal, and Tom Howard Winning Writers.  Her novel manuscript, Merchant of Color, set in the Vatican and Iran during the Renaissance, won the David Morrell First Place Prize at the 2017 New Mexico/Albuquerque Author Festival, was a semi-finalist in the 2019 Faulkner-Wisdom Competition and, along with another one of her manuscripts, In the Shadow of the Tombs, was one of ten finalists in the 2020 Keats Literary Competition. Karima lives in Abiquiu, New Mexico, where the howl of coyotes and the prowling of skunks inspire her to stay inside at night and get more writing done.