SANDCASTLES
For Fadwa Laroui
And for Japan
These are days
when newspapers bury readers in bad news,
when names like yours need
to be unearthed from the wreckage of many other lives –
names which contain nothing but
whispers
hushed, hissed –
floating, drifting.
These are the days of people
asking why why – why you?
When prayers are eaten away by stronger winds;
winds which toss lives like yours onto its tide,
like the crest of a waiting wave.
And it falls to break you on a lonely shore,
with the washed ruins
of a thousand sandcastles,
bullied by the surf.
And there are days, following these
when someone will write your name in the sand;
when, soon, everything will pour away into
the swell, and wretch
you out to sea.
Here no wave disturbs your prayers,
no wind rocks your watery steps.
And here, nothing blossoms but the sky,
as the clouds bear you back
home.