Last of a Line

DEAR DIARY

i am the last of a line

it stops here with me

no children, as yet, to pass the blood on

to flow over the smoothed rocks

of an ancestors foundation

last of a line

where the estuary ends

And as a child, first generation born un the UK, I make sense of my world

With  British Tongue and brown skin.

The book I am to write is of how We came to be here

of how this world's history branded We,

And I am to make sense of the archipelago

Of stories, pebbles washed up on a the shores of

an old empire coughed me out

A free radical

that came into its own,

the thorn in the throat of a giant, a clot

Feel it

It was when I read poetry

that I found the Aunties and other Mama’s who knew me

it was as if they laid their hands upon me.

It was their in their voices, there in the resonance of words

Their deep sigh for me between the lines

to guide my steps

Space for me to write me

I imagine I had not lived an authentic moment

till I felt the word of Maya* or

mm-hm-ed the vex of Sapphire*

Stuck between the cracks of Englands creases

If you truly pressed them out you'd be sick for two bicentenaries

I'm not ready for that kind of sick alone

No, I need to find succor

in the symphonic stutters of Sister Sonia* 
and the cradle of Jean*