Random Thoughts

Homecoming  

Seeded roots ripped from indigenous land,  

dragged through space and time,  

across seas deep and enticing,  

into the darkness of the hold,  

the silence of graves below.  

Crossing the Atlantic,  

ancestors came, worn thin,  

roots stretched, torn up,  

bodies branded, souls bruised,  

stripped bare under Massa’s gaze,  

reduced, remade, reframed.  

Eyes that weighed, eyes that watched,  

each look a lash, a silent command—  

to become what they demanded,  

to unweave, to split, to forget.  

The threads of self unraveled,  

stripped to fragments,  

humanity fractured—  

identity crushed, reshaped,  

stitched back together  

with brutal precision,  

each piece a scar,  

each stitch a wound,  

a story they tried to steal.  

Yet time has passed beneath that gaze,  

etching Du Bois' double consciousness,  

a vision split and polished,  

refined but unbroken.  

And now, as we cross back,  

retracing paths to Tenerife, to Southampton,  

we sail through memory, through grief,  

bearing the weight of voices  

that stir beneath the waves.  

From rugged coasts to rolling green hills,  

from the stretch of roots spread wide,  

or fallen to dust, returned to earth—  

Where do I begin? West, Central, East, or South?  

It doesn’t matter.  

I am home.  

I am found.  

I belong.  

Here, the land greets me,  

with whispers of what was lost,  

of what survived, of what thrived.  

I walk on ground that remembers,  

soil rich with stories, with lives,  

with names that once echoed here.  

This is my place to reclaim,  

to breathe the air,  

to let the earth fill me,  

as I stitch myself whole again—  

a weaving of past and present,  

of voices now heard,  

of a self reborn,  

complete and unbroken.

Echoes

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.— Isaiah 9:2  

They will build houses and inhabit them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit...for as the days of a tree shall be the days of my people, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. — Isaiah 65:21-22  

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.— Genesis 50:20  

Ancestral Hope Fulfilled

  

After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.— 1 Peter 5:10