Drisana Deborah Jack

strange tides
these days
fill up my cup
with bitter water

strange tides linger
set my home adrift
rekindle ancestral memories
me a refugee
make me a refugee

strange tides simmer
reluctant to recede
trapped between a tired sea
and a seething lake
swing low sweet chariot
swing low

strange tides linger
soaking festered sores
softening the scabs of dreams deferred
healing unknown hurts
all this salt needs a place to go
and my cup runneth over

strange tides these days
still a lullaby
an ancestral hymn
wade in the water
wade in the water

strange tides reach underground
shifting tectonic plates
forming new topographies
with the bones of our young
suffer the children
suffer the children

strange tides these days
wash our dead away
as it was in the beginning
street cornered preachers
shout of sin and lasting days
Gods gunna trouble the water
God’s gunna trouble the water

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Jack, Drisana Deborah. Skin. House of Nehesi Publishers, 2006.