The Smell of Exile

we grew up at Home with a warrior thrust tuning our souls to sounds of crickets to rhythms of the soil to smells of the rivers knowing large dreams of moonlight joy we grew up there in an ever rebounding spirit learning songs of seasons that dressed our umbilical cords for the harvest of our dreams— they were songs fathers sang in the cycle many rainless seasons ago many harvest seasons ago we danced away from loving arms of Home onto the snow sea opening widely our limbs to invisible lines that etched new profiteering truths into our being into our minds into our hearts when we heard father died this morning away from Home we were featherless eagles looking for remnants of our nest among anthills at a traffic light fragmented by hideous sores we lost the burial songs made golden by the Sun and made the Dead sleep like babes at Home it was here we remembered the splash of Colors, the smell of Exile the poverty of dispossession which soaked our souls froze memories of green Hills of Home and made us grow resentful to dreams of moonlight joy we looked into the skies and remembered when Locusts burst dams and the deep cuts of Holy Water drowned the glutton voices of our fathers our blood drank the pus from our wounds buried deep by the locusts beneath the skin we lost our dreams of a harvest to the splash of colors we drowned the songs of our fathers in the roar of the holy water today there are many seas to cross with deadly triangular calm they’ll congeal stubborn death breaths while father’s spirit scream at our tenacious fate it is only a season ago since we left, yet we no longer possess the sounds of the crickets we no longer dance to the rhythms of the soil what we have is the pus from the wounds buried deep by the locusts beneath our skin