The Great Displaced

 For Jess

The boy lights a candle

and faces a perilous horizon.

He pulls on his socks, his boots

and picks seeds from between his teeth.

He will leave before dawn.

His sisters are asleep

and he will not wake them

because he believes that dreams are fragile

and shouldn't be disturbed.

The boy is not alone.

He is one of millions

across the broad black beyond,

enacting the ritual of leaving,

the ritual of

sighs.

So to the cities they come,

over roads and highways of waves,

where coral reaches up like a migrant

connecting the stars

into maps of deliverance.

Suitcases blackened

with the sweat and smoke of transit cities,

of roasting meat over hot rocks

and the diesel perfume of foreign docks,

they pass memories like bottles of wine.

The great displaced,

starboard side

harboured

in waters that know nothing of them,

tasting strange languages and lands

harvesting hope with ashy hands-

the children

of fractured communities.

The moon

a sullen orphan

who guides them to reefs of light

where progress is the catchcry,

and each soul is swept towards

modernity

at all costs.

Just because there was no gun to your temple

does not mean you were not forced to leave.

Villages and family ties disappear

then re-appear freshborn and shining in our myths,

daubed on the doorways to ourselves.

The countrysides

become plots for our nostalgia,

sown from afar,

flourishing with orchards of memory.

Each tree laden with fruit,

each fruit a repository of dreams

where real orchards no longer exist.

They are unmapped places

dedicated to everything we miss.

Do we speak too highly of the past?

Were the times not difficult then?

How do you fill the missing spaces?

The boy lights a candle.

He pulls on his boots

and faces a horizon

as heavy

and perilous

as chance.