I am the river dream of my ancestors
The downstream living of so many choices
So much circumstance
For what is it to dream but to envision
A future where you children's children
Never know the gnawing hunger of want
Never know the sound of bombs dropping
Never know the song of despair
Their stories live int he space between my cells
Invisible hopes that flow through
Blue-eyed tributaries of father tongues, mother tongues
Babbling rapids of generations moving
Shaping, changing, the landscapes
Of need that carry them onwards
The shoreline is long
Knots upon knots of this migration umbilicus
Palm prints holding the sweat and tears
Of each waypoint
I can only follow so far upstream
Before the imprints obscure in the floods of time
The headwaters are so far beyond
The sightlines of memory
I ask myself:
What secrets does my blood carry?
What home do my bones remember?
What language is my longing?
What land belonging can be claimed
By a river ever flowing?
