So many times I reach for it
Feel lost when it is lost
Yellows, blues, blood reds and flaking whites
paint of a clinker-built boat, planks and gunnel
Scraped, grazed, flaking, torn
Found on a beach in Lampedusa
Whittled, jointed, joined
above to below
drift-wood to life-wood
Reaching out to hold all hands
But how can a cross comfort or save?
This splintered boat
Puffed with water
Swept up among bright anoraks and florescent
life-jackets that didn’t save
children’s trainers seeping salt water
A beach in a foreign land
And a carpenter gathering the wreckage
on the shore of death and life
Skilfully he crafts the cross, threads and knots its string
And places it around my neck
Its colours weep and bleed
Broken open by rock
This wood
Becoming splint, rift, raft, my redemption
Float me up open
Through tumble twist and tangle
To breathe with you
the breath Christ breaths in each of us
You become tiller, mast, oar,
Community of the dispossessed
Possessing nothing
Possessing all
Rising beneath waves flooded with light
A cross that cannot sink
The kiss of life
The broken boat which takes me home.
Revd Richard Carter
