Between The Dry Dune and the Clustered Leaf

In the scarred cheeks of an African tribe,
Flashing to the rhythms of a goatskin drum,
Far from America, I learned to listen to the dead alive:
The fathers of my father whispering to their son.

Strange       to hear voices among jungle birds
Lapping out laughs, words in bursts,
Beats flung from monkeyed mountain peaks.
Who would guess that, here interspersed
Between the dry dune and the clustered leaf
Beside the cornrows, my ancestor should speak?

In Europe, in Budapest or Rome,
In a fairer clime I figured on finding my past
Frozen under some river’s bridge
Linking fist-patted mortar to crumbling brick.
But seasons before I ever arrived
In the capitals of that continent,
In Africa, where so many tonal tongues strive
To rise and transcend, to sing above lament,
There,     did I hear my forebears speak;
There,     spoken to.

At first it was hard to separate sounds.
A clash of cacophony clouding my ear.
But with focus, that cadence nested
In my head; the song of my fathers so near.
A counterpoint in an alternate tune.
Fusing harmony from today’s lament.
A blending of spirits, rising from a dune.
I stopped searching for a hidden pin,
For some root long buried in the cold.
The chanting kin hinted that in hot gusts
Bedeviling the Sahara lay my route.
No need to trek on. Stop. Breathe. Listen.