Mother Sends Greetings: A Poem

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Seeds spilling from the sky;

Tear drops, rain drops, weeping winds

Bringing tidings from distant dunes,

From the parched sands that clamp tight

Bleached bones of those who flee

The places I raised from the dust of my skin;

The places I called home for their sake.

---

What do you know of me?

You who tinker and twiddle your fingers?

You who draft maps and seek to find the sources

Of my existence, the truth of my being?

What do you know of this ancient crone

You who question my abilities and test theories

On the surface of my skin as if I am a dead thing,

As if the wind had never ruffled my hair,

As if I had never tasted the sweetness of a flower’s kiss,

As if I had never sailed the moon’s path with my eyes

On the unruffled waters of the Nile,

As if my fingers had never swam the rivers’ path

And my feet had never kissed the muddy banks of my people’s fears?

---

Where are the children of my womb?

Where are the fettered ones driven by wind lashed sails,

Who came at night while we slept the sleep of innocence?

Where are the broken ones that stuttered through foliage and rocks,

Into the bossom of the Sahara, into the heedless sun,

Into the unmapped sea of graves?
Where are they?

---

You speak of grief as if you have met her

Have you sat with her as she held your hands

Deep into the night, when the cocks have gone still

And crickets chirp, still unsure of what symphony to spit?

Have you eaten with her and bathed with her?

Has she embraced you as water left your body

To feed the earth with the emptiness of your heart?

---

You speak of pain as if he was your friend.

What do you know of a mother’s pain?

What do you know of the empty silence

That a broken home brings?

The silence that the bland chatter of the television

Can never conceal, can never corrupt.

Let me tell you, you know nothing.

---

You do not know me.

You have not seen the Ethiope

As it meanders between the ribs of mangrove trees,

Cutting its path through the heart of forgotten kingdoms

That fed me with gold, frankincense and myrrh.

You have not stood atop the Kilimanjaro

Or surveyed the savannah of lions and gazelles,

Of ivory tusks and crocodile skins;

Please, you know nothing of me.

---

I sat here in the beginning,

When the world was silent,

When the earth shuffled blind in the dark, I was here.

I held her hands when she sought company

And we exchanged stories;

Two young girls yet to learn of man,

Of cruelty, of pain, of hate, of death.

I sat here when illumination came.

I saw the dawn of men and words;

Of disease and greed, of swords and wars.

---

I have fought and fought for those that are mine.

I have sacrificed for all my children

But now they flee me with their tender feet,

Their suckled lips folded in murmur against me; me!

Do you know me?

Do they know me?

---

My children have forgotten me.

They have forgotten the lullabies I sang

And how I covered them when they cowered

Beneath the shadows of their dreams.

They have forgotten the taste of wood smoked fish

Held to their lips to stave hunger while the pot simmered.

They have forgotten stories told of the tortoise, of the king, of the calabash.

They have left me bereft, my name

A cocked bottle bobbing in the waves, lost.

They have sailed away, their backs stiff,

Their eyes forward, piercing into the distant glitter

And they have left me to fend the cold hearth,

To dodder and totter about this silent hut,

To listen to the whispering wind wooing

The muttering brook that rushes past my backyard.

---

They have forgotten me but you know of me, do you not?

You remember me from before, don’t you?

When I was queen and everything bowed,

You remember don’t you?

Yes you do. I see your eyes.

Do not worry, they do not know me.

The fire has not been quenched.
It smolders banked.

One day it will be stroked and stoked

And the earth will remember she whom she danced with

When the sky was bereft of stars.

Until then, tell them Africa greets them and wishes them well.

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