Sea prayer

My dear Marwan, I look at your profile
in the glow of this moon, my boy,
your eyelashes like calligraphy,
closed in guileless sleep.
And I say to you, ‘Hold my hand.
Nothing bad will happen.’

On a moonlit beach a father cradles his sleeping son as they wait for dawn to break and a boat to arrive. He speaks to his boy of the long summer of his childhood, recalling his grandfather’s house in Syria, the stirring of olive trees in the breeze, the bleating of his grandmother’s goat, the clanking of the cooking pots. And he remembers, too, the bustling city of Homs with its crowded lanes, its mosque and grand souk, in the days before the sky spat bombs and they had to flee.
When the sun rises they and those around them will gather their possessions and embark on a perilous sea journey in search of new home.