This poem is for all those still searching for home.

 

Sailing an Inland Sea

 

A stark white galley, sail aloft,

Knifes liquid mirrors, softly heaving,

Its pattering stem a story-teller

For fishers caught

On idle frontiers, poised

Between vaults of washed cerulean.

 

Its Master sighs to distant shores, yearning

For Phoenicia's Thalassa; a place of purple -

Canaan's Empire – ambition burning,

Trader in cedar and precious dye,

While his vessel glides helpless, blind

Before the endless, choking Khamsin sky.

 

A dominion won by easy courage,

When kings, temple priests, elders all

Bade sailors to lands beyond the seas,

Found riches for their trading halls;

And the Master dreams, as dolphins dodge

On the edge of his dusty reveries.

 

I hear the restless humours of an inland sea,

Calmed by warm dunes on every hand;

A refuge for a refugee,

The sloughing waves that smooth the strand. Listen -

The Semite chatter of ancient sailors

Fades and fills, as the waters surge and flee the sand.

And this will be my home.

 

Chris Hubbard, 2016