Holding On

The boat rocks unmercifully, buckets of waste slop onto the boards, women moan and children faintly mew. The air is so fetid it is difficult to breathe. I close my eyes and feel myself succumbing to an inevitable despair. I am surely lost. We all are. My mind scrabbles vainly at imagined roots, looking to grab anything that will lead me back to happier memories. Then, just as it seems hopeless, as if I have fallen so far into dark introspection that I will never be able to pull myself back up through the deep caves of thought, I hear a voice that sings a familiar song. It is a song from my homeland, sung in the dialect of drystone walls, dusty paths and black carob pods rustling on branches. One voice becomes two, becomes four, until the whole deck fills with its comfort.

Linking this to Prosery Monday at d’Verse poets (https://dversepoets.com/2022/08/15/dverse-prosery-monday-a-voice-that-sings/). The quote Lisa has asked to insert in our prose (of 144 words or less) is: ‘Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings’ and is taken from The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

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