Reply To: Survival Kit #1 – Favourite Excerpts

[Friends]

Followed by this one – also by Funso.

DEAD RECKONING

They say birds always find their way back home
but home is a nowhere — a memory; a never was.

Do wings remember spaces in the air
the way we might a place? A field of rice?

How do you fly back to that? Away from
………………….a tomb of fears, this place yearning for you…

Some years ago, I lay bright flowers on
my grandmother’s grave. Years before, I saw

my grandfather’s ashes taken by the
furrowing wind in the Bocas islands.

I am not myself nor have I ever been
something apprehending the sun

and other bright celestial objects
thinking: this is a tapestry in orbit

around me. I am completely convinced that
we were the last creatures to discover

how to be in the world. My beard grows wild.
My children brush past me in the darkness.

Their chattering voices fill my ears and
then my chest and I cannot hold it in.

I am always coming home.