Last year I wrote a scrap of a song
It says,
Can you feel the light break through the clouds?
And the melody starts high - almost too high
And floats downward
As if on currents of air
Today I was on my sixth plane flight in six days.
When turbulence hits
I grip the armrests, turn up the music in my headphones
To drown out the fear and nausea
And repeat the mantra of my journey:
Kansas City. Chicago. Louisville. Atlanta. New York. Accra.
Can you feel the light break through the clouds?
On the seventh day, as if in scripture
The seventh descent from high altitudes
Fighting nausea I looked across the plane at the tiny porthole
The small window of cloud and fog and sky
The plane lurched downward again
“Where are you?” I asked aloud
And could not believe that tears were already streaming down my face
“Where are you?” I asked aloud again
As the plane dipped
And then
Can you feel the light break through the clouds? For an instant
The clouds parted
And she was there.
Africa.
Just a flash of houses and trees
That was swallowed up again by clouds
But I had seen her
With my own eyes
I had looked upon her
The plainness
And the beauty
Ordinary trees
Ordinary homes filled with ordinary people
They could not imagine, or maybe even understand
How my heart nearly burst
At the sight Before she was hidden by clouds again
Africa
I am an orphan who has caught the smallest glimpse
Of his mother in a crowded airport
She may not fully recognize me anymore
Or I, her
As we have been apart
For four hundred years
And haltingly, try to speak to one another
In foreign languages
I don’t even recognize you anymore
After the centuries
But at some point
We were fashioned together in this clay
And there is an echo of your deep eyes
And your rich, luminous, brown skin
That lives in me
Though flickering
And many times diluted
Yes, Mother
It is still me
I am one of yours
Can you see
The resemblance?
I have flown across the Atlantic
I have arrived from another continent
Where I was adopted and abused
And fell in love and made music
And marched and wept and fought and died
And overcame and languished behind bars
I have flown from my wicked step-mother’s house
All across that great wide water
To find you
Though it has been so long
Though I don’t recognize you
And I don’t even recognize
Myself.
Hold me for a little while.
Be as ugly and as beautiful as you are
Be as rich and poor and sick as you are
Let me bathe in your rich humidity
Your bosom warm embrace
That I remember from my fetus life
Hold me just a little while
You do not need to perform for me
Or impress me
Just let me breathe your air for a moment
Look at your sky for a moment
I can be a runaway distant cousin
Who you never met
Or never liked
Or always longed for
I am used to being unrecognizable
I never looked like
Anyone
In my family
Before.
My bare feet have not touched your soil yet
The clay that formed us both
But when I’ve slept, and woken again
I will step lightly on the firmament
And whether it is grass, or sand, or gravel
Or even if it is littered and unclean
I’ll press my toes down into this
Small part of your body
And as if I stood at the beginning of the book of Genesis
When light was first thrown out to spangle the cosmos
I’ll look out over your ordinary trees
And your ordinary homes
And your ordinary people
Black and Beautiful
And I will say,
“It is good.”