Night Boat on Galilee

I board when the surface is calm
            as the lull before a symphony.

In that pause a lyre-lake
            mirrors the stars.

If I listen hard I almost hear a nocturne’s opening chords
            as I float over earth’s rift,

and in my net, a shoal of notes
            flap their tails.

My boat cradles me as a squall swoops
            from the Golan Heights

and plucks the roots of subterranean springs
            that feed the shrinking lake.

The woods of quiet are carob, willow, Aleppo pine,
            terebinth, tabor oak and cedar.

The two-thousand-year-old fishing vessel dredged from clay
            after a year of drought

was built from these – planks so waterlogged
            they would disintegrate in air.

I board that craft between destruction and repair,
            in the listening-lake Kinneret

where Jesus walked over two thousand strings
            of liquid harp,

summoning lightness from a breath of birdsong.
            I board my boat

as sound waves lap against the hull
            drawing Aeolian sighs

from the rings of the Tree of Life.
            And if this wreck is from a battle

I’ll sing to the spirits of the trees
            which were felled to build it
           
until the leaves grow back on their branches
            and water rises up dry veins – enough for the world

to drink, for the water-music to stop all wars. I still my ears
            as the constellations tune their instruments.

The Royal Watercolour Society commissioned this poem for their
Poets and Painters exhibition at Bankside Gallery, London, UK, November 2008.