Mother Africa’s lament:

These trees will turn to sand and your footprints

will lead you many miles away - be still my children

and do not oppose the fingers with your thumbs;

it is a deceit of technology, control moves further away

the more you create. Do not shed your mother’s fur

so that you may hunt, for the running will take you

far, far away and your Mother will lie here, breasts

empty and a hollowness where her womb should be.

I know the lure of flint, see the thirst grow for blood,

how it thickens the neurons and expands the brain

but upright is not the only answer, my daughter or son,

and at the end of all the days the ocean will not sing

for you or your children - will never sing for you.

The ocean dreams other dreams -

ones I left behind in that faraway time

before I rose in my fashion

and started my own journey away from home.