“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul”

and after a long journey, after experiencing the worst others are capable of

after being flung back only

I, exile, find myself waiting at some foreign transit station

waiting to be, long, belong, grow, rooted

I, continent: my hands, eyes, feet, shoulders, knees, mouth

waiting to be held, seen, grounded, spread

I, body, wear, what I pull over my head at night to sleep under

waiting for a roof, blanket, dream to call my own

my child’s hands trace the dirt that remains

some speak of dirt to name soil that has been displaced

my palms the paths I knew

its lines also contain my futures,

my eyes the family I will not see again

a pile of bodies in between the land and me.

‘scape

the rift is a dream-hoard

ghost presences shimmer in the air

desire gutters over

the lip of the border

they want –who are the they

property, payback, collateral

I long for a waking that remembers

a name, a life

my shadow grows

long with tomorrows

whose oath to stanch the tears

the dead shed only yesterday

death the only truth of the living

the silent stations of the stars

cross over me, shelter is the promise

of the sun in my eye again

my head is not a stone

my words are not bars

“we do not inherit the landscape from our ancestors

but borrow it from our children”

a ticking within and in the distance

sun drifts, grass splits muteness doubles the mind

another shot on the road remnants’ trail

without eyes and tongue, without hands

the earth a cart of limbs

only a shoe remains.

in the quiet of the night the wind

rips holes for me to walk through

Water Writ

Across the sea vowels appear and disappear.

The susurrus of waves lives in your throat of truth.

Your cloud messenger makes a ceaseless passage.

I must listen with iron in my mouth.

I must read the blood gathering at the shore.

Why did you swaddle me in this liquid shroud?

Here is where my inheritance drowns.

I will fill up my heart with what’s lost.