Marie Athena Occeme Poet Haibun

The Earth Remembers

I wake before sunrise, when the rooster’s cry splits the silence like a conch shell blown at dawn. In the yard, the mapou tree stands upright, as if it has an appointment with the sky. Grandmother used to say the mapou never forgets. Its roots guard the secrets of the ancestors even when the winds grow restless.
I walk on the red earth, dust clinging to my heels like the country’s signature. Each grain carries a story: enslaved bodies rising into revolution, women in the markets lifting nations with baskets on their heads, poets writing with hunger in their stomachs but fire in their eyes. The sea is not far — it applauds against the rocks, as if repeating, We are still here.
Amid the noise of tap-taps and vendors calling, “Hot rice and beans!”, I hear a drum in the distance. It is not only music — it is the heartbeat of a people. It sounds even when exhaustion bends our backs, even when politics gathers heavy clouds. The drum knows this secret: roots do not die easily.
I pause and close my eyes. I remember the blue and red flag — not merely colors, but a mark of dignity. They may tear the cloth, but they cannot unravel its meaning.
Red earth beneath my feet,
the mapou grips the years tight —
the sea does not forget.

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