Ancestral Veneration- On a plantation
I go back
to Naija, Benin
far
through Togo, Ivory Coast
hear Ghana’s call
Ancestral memory.
I go back
far
as Sarah and Samuel
my great-great-greats
and their parents
whose names weren’t written
only place of birth,
Virginia.
They came
far.
bought
brought
bought
up Virginia’s mountains
its bumps
questions
valleys
slopes
no answers
dogwood and oaks
white, emerald green
sprouts off ancestors’ backs.
I have gone
far
since learning of Sarah and Samuel
their parents no name names
until I too reached Virginia
the state
clotted soaked soil
wrapped my mind
in thorny vine
grown, prodded, poked
until I had no choice but to look its way.
I sat
on
that plot
plantation
stared its mountain down
knowing Sarah and Samuel
their parents
breathed the wind
that found its way to me.
They heard the bumble
of carpenter, thick busy bees
and caught sight
a glimpse
of their
GREAT.
My ancestors flutter
on hope filled wings.
Virginia crinkles
its edges burn
like the documents I know stay hidden
with truth and dates and times
names
and how far.
In plain sight they
invisible forces
churned air and
in my lungs
they breathe
protection.
A couple of years ago, I stepped on a tiny plane, landed at a tiny airport, and took on a fellowship at @vacenterforthecreativearts. I didn’t know why a sense to venture to rural Virginia came to me until I spent nights in my room, eyes burning for those who once toiled the valleys & hills of Virginia until they were marched to Kentucky, those who I share DNA. The campus is located in a former plantation.
For days, I grappled with a sense of loss. I tugged air and tried to catch hold of my ancestors on each breeze. I stared baffled as white cohorts swam in a lake where remnants of the enslaved may still rest at its bottom. I stood on the burial grounds of those who were enslaved and wondered if the ones beneath my feet were a part of me.
On those winding roads of the former plantation, I asked, why am I here?
And I realized that while my purpose was to write, it was also to witness that a place beyond the residency called out to me.
I still hold those feelings to this day, that the ancestors can beckon you to a place beyond your own understanding, literally and figuratively. And maybe my honoring them all those nights I looked out of my residency window was some form of ancestral veneration on a land they once roamed.
The drowned facts of my history continue to force their way to the surface, and one day all will be known, even if it takes a lifetime to figure out this puzzle. #juneteenth #ancestors #blackhistory #writer #author
