Potato Groves

How many stars were visible the day Jesus was born?
And on the day the midwife delivered my father,
how many stars were in the sky then?
Back then could people drink rainwater,
hold it in place on their tongues?

In Lebanon,
I told my mother
I've never seen it rain here before;
the next day
it rained and rained.

Was it fit enough for the potato groves to drink up?
And did Jesus ever drink water from the sky?
If so, the rain
swallowed by the potatoes is holy
and blessed are Syrian hands who pick them;
holy water for fertile lands,
a crescent shape,
a reflection of the moon.

A story
My father tells me:
to earn some pocket money
boys would pile up in a van
to the potato groves
picking them from the ground.

And the stars,
visible in the open land of the groves,
once maps for our ancestors,
are slowly becoming memories to us

We ask the rain:

can you bring us the stars
so we can tether them to Earth,
envelope them in the soil
and give them a home they did not know in space?

The Syrian boy wonders where his father has gone,
stars still lingering on that dark morning.
The grove is bodiless,
the only place his father would be.

What is homecoming if it is forced?
Stars unearthed from holy soils,
what is a son without his father,
a boy without a home?

Though there may still be stars
and the rain may fall
in the holy land,
no one knows holiness;
there is nothing holy here.