Don't turn back this boat.

His relatives had abandoned him,

His parents were enemies of the state,

They were being hunted down by the king's army,

They were terrified and alone. 

He was barely a few days old,

His mother,

A young teenage girl,

Recovering from the ordeal

of giving birth,

Without a midwife,

A mother, a sister,

Or an aunt.

No hot water, or clean cloths.

She endured,

In the most unsanitary conditions imaginable

Her screams barely reaching

The closed doors of the inn

As the "Tribe of Judah",

Joseph's family,

Turned their backs

Merciless,

And callous. 

Desperate,

They made their escape,

Their only hope

To plead for refuge

In a foreign land,

Thousands of kilometres away. 

When, finally, exhausted and sore,

They arrived at the river,

They begged for a passage

To carry them across the waters

to safety,

Their foreign accents

Betraying their isolation

They were asylum seekers,

Throwing themselves on the mercy

Of a strange land,

Refugees in a boat,

Arriving at the shoreline

Pleading for the life of their son.