Thursday, January 26, 2017

Translation of life




Translation of life (Somewhere, a hummingbird)

My earliest memories are of rain
The life giving force of creation
Pouring love out of the sky
The river would swell brown
And two little brown girls would find mirth in the bubbling pools

This is how my life began:
Wet, green and innocent
Full of familar
Hide and seek in the wild bananas
The heady perfume of rain lilies and night blooming jasmine
And god’s low murmur rolling in from the edges of the world
Thunder was our lullaby

Baptized in the laughing waters of earth’s compassion
I emerged from the cloud forest
With the scent of rebellion in my skin
And only love in my heart

You look at me now
Walking with a hurried pace
Through your hallowed halls
Through your world of white noise,
broken promises and secret handshakes
My arms appear full
But really they are empty
Really they are reaching
Reaching for the ladder that you are pulling up
From under me
Really
They are reaching
For the truth

You can take your Locke and Kant
And liberal ideals
Your rhetoric of equality
And television heroes

I have read your theories
And justified your justifications
I have been bled by your cultural leaches
And numbed by the sugary taste of consumption

I have survived in your world
Even though its whole purpose is to tear me apart
Again
And again
And again

I have translated my life
Into your thick and carnivorous tongue

I have survived
With my sense
Of justice
Intact

But what have you done
To know who I am?
Do you assume I am like you
Just because I seem to fit in?

I take comfort
In knowing
That you are faint of heart
That you are more cowardly than you think
Because bravery does not come from the exercise of privilege

Rather, it comes from humility

I take comfort in knowing
That you do not care to know

Who I am
How I got here
Because it leaves me with something
Maybe the only thing
In this world
That I know
Is really mine

Something that I do not have to translate
Something wet, green and familiar

Somewhere, a hummingbird
Seeks sustenance in the succulent purple blossom of a wild banana
Clouds gather on the edges of the world
And god hums along



2 comments: