SYMPHONY OF DAWN

Long is the night
Of broken promises
And being faced
With ahistorical ranting

Long is the night of
Words that threaten
And denial that
They do

Long is the night
Of observation
In which what should be terrifying
Is disconnected by dehumanizing

Long is the night
Of frozen sadness
And self reprimanding
That I am not responding enough to an avalanche of hatred

Long is the night
Of guilt for my Egungun
At my lack of defense
Or increasing the world’s .2%

Long is the night
Of explaining to every
Affinity group an
Experience of privileged disregard which we don’t get to state

I want to return to
The time when I
Was just an American
And the whole possibility of my life trajectory hadn’t changed

When some untrained
Therapists aren’t telling us it’s our
Embedded historical trauma
When I was never afraid
or fathomed its’ repetition

When my fear arrived
In this present moment
People made ok
Anything that happened to me

People who don’t own
Positions
And religions
In spite of
What the Yorùbá say

That we all walk
Through the hall of souls
That we all grab
Our Odù there
And again
In the Igbódù
That we all have Ifá
And that’s
Spread through
Every religion and individual DNA

A unity
Of the silence exists
In this still dawn
With no engine sounds

But dewey
Birdsong
Rejoicing in the quiet
Communication

A time that
Song seems to be
Connecting through
Distances and different tribes

I thank Olódùmarè
For this reminder
Because soon I must return
To the long night