My love, I’m grateful tonight Our listing bed isn’t a raft Precariously adrift As we dodge the coast-guard light,
And clasp hold of a girl and a boy. I’m glad that we didn’t wake Our kids in the thin hours, to take Not a thing, not a favorite toy,
And we didn’t hand over our cash To one of the smuggling rackets, That we didn’t buy cheap lifejackets No better than bright orange trash
And less buoyant. I’m glad that the dark Above us, is not deeply twinned Beneath us, and moiled with wind, And we don’t scan the sky for a mark,
Any mark, that demarcates a shore As the dinghy starts taking on water. I’m glad that our six-year old daughter, Who can’t swim, is a foot off the floor
In the bottom bunk, and our son With his broken arm’s high and dry, That the ceiling is not seeping sky, With our journey but hardly begun.
Empathy isn’t generous, It’s selfish. It’s not being nice To say I would pay any price Not to be those who’d die to be us.