Where everything began – the beach at Akka

where everything began – the beach at Akka

heels buried in the sand,
I sit on a shore
made from the fragments
of every relic in history.
temples worn to dust,
walls that once held back empires,
cities folding back into the earth.

every grain beneath me
remembers something.

once, the wind crossed these lands
carrying the first seeds of wheat
to a waiting world.
hands pressed them into the soil
and learned the patience of bread.

here, between our river and our sea,
the earth first learned its names.

somewhere nearby
a reed was cut
and pressed into clay
so that voices
could outlive memory.
the first of us looked up
into the black field of night
and traced the slow path of the stars
so sailors might find their way
across the breathing deep.
everything that ever was
began somewhere near me.

we counted the world into being:
pebbles, harvests, moons,
the unending grains of sand.
and in the quiet between numbers
we imagined the birth of nothing,
the silent zero
from which infinities unfold.
everything you are
originated here.

later still, when the ships came,
lost between horizons,~
ragged, thirsty,
thin sails stitched with hope,
hulls smelling of far forests,
we bade them welcome
showed them the wells,
fed their souls.

even in their wars,
when they called us infidels,
we dressed their wounds.
we steadied their hands
when their blood would not stop.
we did not pause
to count the cost
of our sadaqah.

we are the seeds on the wind.
we are the sand on the shore.
we are the whisper on the sea.
empires pass through us
like fleeting weather,
still we live on.
still the olive trees lean toward the sun.
still the tide carries us
from one shore to another.

now the streets behind me
are dust and broken stone.
so I face the water
and refuse to turn,
afraid that if I look away
even for a moment
I might lose sight
of the thin blade of light
waiting below the horizon.

sure sign that somewhere,
beyond the dark,
tomorrow is already rising.

and when the sun lifts
its first fire from the sea
and the wind again fans the flame,
lifting grains of sand
that once were walls
and temples
and forgotten cities,

we will still be,
somewhere here,
between our river and our sea.

I may be gone by then.
but on this land
a child with a gentle hand
will press a seed
into the earth
for the first time.

and the world
will begin
again.

🤍🐝
Jeff Bee

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