I have the opportunity to review a powerful work that portrays women as a quiet but unstoppable force. This poem is from my friend, the talented and respected poet Dr. Bashir Issa Al-Shirawi of Qatar.
The poem
By Dr. Bashir Issa Al-Shirawi:
She Who Walks with Light
She moves with time, yet time cannot hold her.
Through dust and doubt, she gathers her strength.
From pain, she shapes resilience.
From hope, she kindles fire.
She honors yesterday
And rises stronger from every fall.
She does not wait for the dawn—
She carries the light within
And creates tomorrow
With every brave step.
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Poetry Review:
“She Who Walks with Light”
Dr. Bashir Issa Al-Shirawi of Qatar.
Review
By Yatti Sadeli
⚘️This poem is a portrait of a woman as a quiet but unstoppable force.
In 10 lines, the poet successfully encapsulates an inner journey from wound to fire, from falling to creating tomorrow.
The title “She Who Walks with Light” can be read two ways: she walks with the light, or she walks as the light.
The line “carries the light within” emphasizes the latter. The light is not borrowed from the dawn; it is innate, which she chooses to keep burning.
Conclusion “She Who Walks with Light” is a short, powerful poem. It doesn’t lament the darkness, it doesn’t glorify the wound, it doesn’t wait for a savior. It notes: a woman who makes peace with her fall and chooses to light herself will always be one step ahead of time.
Each line feels like an affirmation that can be taped to a mirror—not to be read once, but to be remembered whenever doubts arise.
He loved the dregs of the broth and the stub of days left:
The little sleep nudging and knocking on his eyes,
And the crystal crumbs crying uneaten on the plate.
He shredded sweet meats with forked toothpicks,
A tired mouth disdained the rinds of cheese.
The tiny crimps on the suit he missed in the ironing
Lingered like sore fingers of a leprous hand.
All the small words that stuck to his throat like phlegm and the bigger world of remembering of those days,
Those tiny footnotes his life had become
Sat like dust on the oaken table, grey and tangible.
At last he mowed down his once-hot soupand the bistre in his eyes asked not for pity.
GEOMETRY OF THE DAY AFTER
What happens when the sirens
stop? Think of the silence,
or the rhetoric’s sweet sonic
in the city’s cold tumult.
Talk of the spikelets raising heads after the clean shave.
I choose you, a stranger’s outstretched hand, after the unmerciful quiet wears your face to the bones.
I see your ears
Pockmarked in blood, your name, splattered across the city’s grey face,
cake into a totem cream.
The sounds you bear
from rapping the door and flaking the wall
in the city hall conjure the ghost of the last frost.The only time birds sang
in the blistered sky
was when the moon wrestled the earth.
AS THE OVERPLAYED TURNTABLE GROANS
the world holds its breath as if sweet stenches from the trenches were some fetish to disdain or dissuade.
The skeletal threads of fire and brimstone chainsaws to teacups.
Morning hailstorms ground the waters of Hormuz.
Brackish taste remembers what the smell strains to unlearn.
Every step is a swindle of note. Every word a luxury.
Every tap dance kneads a hollow sound in the bones
from the brain that owns a hundred ritual regrets to the trails of ourselves in the shadow overlooking the cliff we turn to for a plunge. We love grunge whether the sun sinks behind hills or
the world frays at its forked ends.We are worn-out fingers on a ploughshare,
the forgotten half-life of a smouldering song.
PARABLE OF THREE TANGLED SPIRITS
Freedom rides in the saddle of death.In his hands lies the reins and the kingdom,
neither sauntering nor galloping in the streets of Jerusalem,
not sweating or wallowing in Golgotha’s fields;
thoughts scurry awayuntil the trial pales into a shadow.
In the remnants of a losing battle and a strained home,
Jesus dreams of marrying a shadow.
Neither flesh nor soft touch stays, but silence
that sways like miracles within.
Smoothly, the water splits into wine,
When Mary and Martha linger at his feet,
it is as if the lips of heaven were kissing His Holy Ventriloquist with the magic words.
How will a spiritual eye choose between two beauties?
One ruby-haired and full-bosomed. The other blue-eyed and sprite. What is the cost of the fragrance in shekels? And the trio spar unclad in a serpent bed
where the sheets frayed in a million places.
A pillow strains with mixed blood and lumps
of a built-in liberty; in the transfiguration of love,
intransigence hardens a garden into a layered city
where bones and walls refuse to die.
Nattie O’Sheggzy is a poet who, often accompanied by his loyal dog, Exhale, finds inspiration in the complexities of simple things. He is the author of two poetry collections: Random Imaginations and Sounds of the Wooden Gong. Nattie’s work has been featured in various literary publications, including Literary Yard, Sandy River Review, Everscribe, Ultramarine Review, Heroin Love Song, Agape Review, SweetSmell Journal, Smoky Quartz, Feed The Holy, and LiteZine. He is currently working on publishing his third poetry collection.
like a curtain caught in a window that was never opened
and even now there’s a silence I visit sometimes
where she almost speaks
and I almost answer
Leon Drake is a Toronto based poet whose work has been published in print and online. He lets his writing speak for him. For art is the best side of us.
And the light through the kitchen window of course.
Not forgetting the chill in the air
that the warm is starting to get around to.
But, in lieu of company, I have this cup.
Instead of conversation, I sip.
In the world of anatomical animation,
this caffeine juice is paramount.
My mouth creases upwards into a smile.
My eyes flick aside the sleep detritus,
open wide.
I am coming into my body, into my own.
Soon I will be ready for the world.
Who knows?
I might even, in my own way, shape it.
WELCOME
The baby draws her first breath.
A nurse’s brown eyes look down on her.
It’s all good now they say
but just you wait.
The doctor takes no side.
He’s here to do his job.
Some woman meekly asks,
“Can I see her.”
Her glass body lies in pieces.
But at least her heart is intact.
For now.
The nurse camps a red face
inches from the pillow.
The baby waves her arms like wings.
Through the blur of pain,
she’s soft enough
to be an angel.
An angel that’s fishing for compliments.
So soon. So young.
TOM
Tom’s body just developed sooner
than the skinny frames of the rest of us.
He arms and legs grew muscles
while our limbs could have cleaned pipes.
No wonder he was school sports star:
best player in the rugby and cricket teams,
fastest in the hundred and two hundred,
records in the long jump and javelin.
His school work was below average.
He hated to read
and he struggled with geometry.
But we made him class captain anyhow.
He was never a smartass, never a bully.
Kids looked up to him,
figuratively and literally.
But things didn’t go so well for him
once he left school.
Most of us caught up with him
in size if not in speed.
He worked in his father’s garage,
liked a drink, lost two teeth in a fight,
got a girl pregnant and married her,
divorced, took over the business
when his father died, then learned
to really love a drink, went bankrupt,
lost track of his kid, ended up on
the streets and sleeping on a park bench,
spent the rest of his days as an example
for mothers to point at when they were
out with their children.
I saw Tom not long before he died.
He was unshaven, dressed in torn t-shirt
and greasy jeans, and sneakers that
flapped at the toes.
Most people avoided him.
I just bent my head down
as he cried out, “Hey, don’t I know you?”
I remembered so many times
when guys were picking sides
and Tom was always first one called
and I was near last.
Now life had chosen me well ahead of him.
But that did nothing for my pride, my ego.
If it was a game
than it was one that didn’t feel right,
wasn’t worth playing.
He staggered onward.
I just kept walking.
ODE TO HOLLY
Here’s a sharp air to match its claws,
a chilly white to shimmer its dark blood,
a wind to blow the ilex blue
at a Christmastime of gloved hands plucking.
But here’s a survivor in a hard-bitten land,
a stem of insurrection,
leaves defiantly evergreen,
branches bone-brittle
but militant against the freeze.
GREEN MAN
I walk where hills lean into sky,
where green is a language all its own.
My lungs, grateful. My mind,
rinsed clean by lordly pine
and patient moss.
What else is there but to wander –
to listen for the shy rustle of brush,
the flit of wings, the soft syllables spoken
by trees to the wind?
My boots speak in twig-snaps and stone-taps,
but even they fall silent when the breeze arrives,
a gentle visitor brushing my cheek.
The forest stirs. And I, no longer needing to speak,
am blessed by the quiet.
Honestly, it knows more than I do.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Novus and Abbey. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the MacGuffin, Touchstone and Willow Review.
