We Paint Dust and Weave Wind

Notes on: immaterial cultural patrimony experienced in diaspora

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This body swallows everything 

Find me sleeping in a giant mouth

Surrounded by soon-to-be-swallowed luxuries

 I rest alert, and diligent,

watching/living as not to be taken

Consumed and sucked dry of marrow

Eaten whole, still writhing

I wait in the sliver of space between its teeth 

Is it any surprise

our best works survive

because they know transformation?

Are we not children of adaptivity 

Our language; songs that last through forced silences

Written codes on Kanga

Symbols on the walls of our home

A plant placed on the doorstep

Meaning making, without words to carry them

absorbed through the skin, eyes, ears, into the mind

All that is swallowed can re-emerge

Can’t it? 

Songs stories have carried us afloat through an oceanless land

And on and on we paint onto shifting sands, speak in patterns woven on wind, knowing deeply;

we must remember

We know: if not, it will consume all that manifests in the physical world