An Ode To My Ancestors

About fifteen years ago (ouch! that makes me feel old), after watching a movie set during slavery, or the Jim Crow era, I wrote a poem that expressed my state of mind after the movie. The words just came to me in the middle of my workday and I just stopped working, pulled up Word and started typing. It felt like my ancestors were talking to me and guiding me through it, and to this day I still don't have a title for it.

These last few months have really been extra trying for people of colour ('extra' because truth be told, everyday can be trying for us). The protests, the videos of blatant police brutality, the vigilante murders of unarmed black people, it's too much. It's too much for a people to keep taking day after day, year after year, century after century.

So I went digging into my old files and emails to find this poem and just reconnect with my ancestors. To remind myself that I come from greatness, and that no matter how the world sees me, I have the blood of great women and men from my past running through my veins, and that's what keeps me going, keeps my head up, keeps me teaching my kids that they are worthy, strong, great, and from a rich heritage that they should be proud of everyday of their lives.

I hope that this poem helps you remember where and whom you come from. I hope it inspires you, in those moments of despair, to draw strength not only from your source of spiritual strength, but from your ancestors too. Remembering that, if they made it through such hardship during their time, then what is your excuse? If they didn't make it through their hardships, I...we wouldn't be here. And for that I say "Gatho Nyingĩ Aagũ Akwa", "Asanteni Wahenga Wangu", "Thank You My Ancestors"

I lay here and shut my eyes real tight, trying to ignore what’s happening to me

I think of a place I once knew where there were no boundaries to what we could do,

Field so green, flowers bloomed so bright, and the sun.

Oh! That warm sun that wrapped you up in its warm embrace, caressing your face, wiping away any trace of sadness, bringing you close to

her breast like a mother holding on to her new born child,

inhaling his essences in awe of the miracle of birth.

I lay there reminiscent of a time when I didn’t have to meet a quota to eat,

If it didn’t get done today, shoot! There’s always tomorrow.

Yes, there was always the promise of tomorrow. But now I lay here and wonder do I still have tomorrows? Do I still have a chance to dance to the beat of the drummer’s drum? Hum the tunes that were once sang by the great kings and queens? Take in the scenes of mountains that never seem to end, and rivers that go on without a bend?

The crackle of the whip against my already torn flesh, jolts me back to a present I’d rather forget. Tied face down on the gravel, my thoughts are brought back from whence they’d traveled. Stretched out face down on the dirt, hands and feet spread apart, gritting my teeth and shutting my eyes, trying hard to muffle the hurt. With every swish of the whip, I bite harder into my lip, the taste of blood reminding me that I too am human like the bearer of my source of pain, even

tho’ he would rather see me as ¾ of a man.

Exhausted and out of breath, he wipes his hand across his brow, “…that’ll teach you that a nigger shouldn’t steal from his master, or you pay the price…now you know!” I lay there, contemplating, toying with the idea of just peeling off this dark skin. Why keep the one thing that has brought nothing but pain to me and my kin? Reduced me to nothin’ but a tool for the white fool to use to climb up out of the economic pit, and really, not giving a shit about who got him to that peak!

Why hold on to this skin that they see as an excuse to rid me of my innocence, a free ticket to board this train that’ll give them a ride to my essence? Why should I keep this curse that denies me my right to sing the songs of my mother? Use the name given to me by my father? Speak that sweet tongue of my grandmother? Why embrace this plague that has taken away so many of my kind as we try to find meaning in all this?

I lay there content with the idea that death is ready and waiting to embrace me into its cold dark domain, I hear distant cries from the other slaves as they rush to untie me and soothe me of my pain. Blood, dripping down my side and onto the dirt forming a little red river that flows unhurriedly, slowly taking whatever life I have left in me with it. And as the earth embraces my tortured blood, for a moment . . . for one brief moment I hear the cries of my people reaching out.

Generations of strong African women dancing to the beat of the drummer’s drum, singing songs to remind me of who I am, from whence I have come and who I am destined to become. “Take pride in who you are child, a product of nothing less than greatness. Have no shame in your nappy mane or your full luscious lips and curvy vivacious hips, your soft, sun-kissed mahogany skin, and deep chestnut brown eyes that can draw any man in. You are an African queen and your time to rise is nigh”.

Beaten, broken, and bruised, I lay here, but with a renewed strength washing over me, filling me, overwhelming me, reminding me that many before me suffered this same fate, yet they still rose. So now I too will rise up from this bloody puddle, I will rise to see another tomorrow, and feel that warm sun cuddle my mahogany skin. Oh! Best believe I will rise, so I can dance to the beat of the drummer’s drum, and hum the songs that the great kings and queens once sang.

Amie K.K

©2005