Taken From the Land of my Fathers

Taken From the Land of my Fathers:

Oh Shoe, you have taken me from the island of my fathers.

Across a rough and dangerous sea,

used for your pleasure,

only to be tossed aside like last night’s dinner bones.

 

And yet my life has been preserved when I might have been taken by the whole crew.

I live to see the dawn, yet castaway on a foreign shore.

With no recourse to a friendly face, I am left to make my own way.

I turn without a backward glance at where I have been.

 

This poem is an ordinary tale of woe, sung by a brown bird princess and freedom is my song.

This rough sea journey has given me a narrative, a starting point

from which to make the rest of the story with my own hands.

My agency is my gift from the sea and this verse is my gift of telling.

 

I recount this tale in the spirit of thankfulness,

for a life given and well lived.

I sing for the wisdom to find the good so as not to be drowned by self-pity.

I pray for the heart to forgive so as not to be dissolved in bitterness.

 

I give you dear listener, dear reader, my story.

Although it costs in the telling, I let it go.

One small voice full of passion and verve,

in a sea of voices and words and narratives.

 

Your eyes have considered and absorbed my actions.

Your mind has untangled and made sense of my thoughts and words.

We have walked a short journey together during the telling.

For this I thanks God in this time and place.

 


 

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