The ancestors still toil within me
Their rough dark hands hold the cutlasses
labouring in the fields of my mind
clearing away the weed and bush of
negative thinking, before burning them
and then digging holes where they will plant
fresh thought suckers like cane tops
that they will manure as the thoughts grow
through minutes as long as the twelve to fifteen
months that it takes for the hard sweet grass to mature.
They set the field afire, burning the nests of
the poison snakes of my self doubt, while
searing off the leaves of unnecessary words,
and whittling down thought to its sweet tubers;
Then they use their cutlasses, to cut thought’s tubers like
cane stalks, before packing them into the neat bundles,
of stanzas on a paper page.
Then, spurred by the whip of my impatience
They harness their muscular black bodies
to the large stone wheel of my brain’s
mill to crush the hard grass of words to juice
which they will bring to a mull-like boil,
inside the steel pot of my cranium,
over and over, before finally fermenting it.
All this while I sit on the patio of my mind’s
Great House, made strong by the knowledge
of the sacrifices of slaves burning cane fields
in rebellion and taking task to their
oppressive Masters, ultimately paying
blood’s weight for their freedom.
And even after centuries of their physical non-existence
their work remains defiantly undone;
for this is essentially their offering-
somewhat of an intoxicant -
This equivalent of rum, on a page.
- Garfield N. Morgan