Vigil for Wholeness
 
                                1.
 
Slave Coast ’s swamp and lagoon,
Rappahannock ’s teeming marshes,
Irish Sea ’s chill mist
                nurtured couplings
                                whose gift of blood and flesh
                                                I am.
 
                                               2.
 
Conjurer of souls, quicken this world with long-lost kin.
Draw from the leather pouch
            wampum strip      crocodile tooth      peat moss tuft
 
I am asking to be born
                far cry from fugitive accomplice I hid
                when forbidden entrance, seat, or sip:
                                leching master’s blanched remain;
                                rapture’s casualty;
                                little mule packing dead seed.
 
                                                3.
 
Suddenly, whoops ululations yips chants.
Flambeaux sear the welcoming dark.
Ancestors, intent upon their return,
                have come down to let me in.
 
Natives whose earths I never cleaved
                to bury, sow, mine, or build—
                                Niger River ’s thresher of pearl millet,
                                weaver of sweetgrass and wattle,
                                Cork ’s grizzled potato farmer—
                usher me to the serenade.
I clap and stomp among elders
                who in midnight’s notch, encircle me.
               
Musky chests and fragrant bodices mingle.
Beaded moccasins stutter step heel-to-toe
as a stick thumps the bodhran.
Tin whistle chirps. Baling wire
                straddling weathered planks
                plucks blue, quavery notes on the wind.