Kathy Miles

Passage

A boy washed up like driftwood. Unclaimed,
unknown. His clothes soaked, his shoes lost.
Sea cloaks his skin with a skim of salt.

Midnight. Surf purling across the stern, water
grasping sleep like a succubus, as they scoop it
desperately up in their cold cupped hands.

The dinghy listing to the current’s reach.
Dawn. And the scourge of waves unmans them now
as it sweeps inside the sag of sinking bows.

10 am. They slide from the side, surge swifting them
from the gunnels as the boat slips slowly under.
Swept away in the swell. Oceans in their eyes,

drowned gaze still fixed to our horizons. Uncharted
on the radar. This stain on the world’s heart.