we're planning 5th annual Africa Day...

[touchstoneaf]

In honor of that, a memory...and a yearning.
***

“Africa”

i recognized you the moment i landed.
You were upon me like a wave upon the beach of my cells;
“I remember you.”

i knew you, like it had been one life,
and not a million generations, never realized,
dormant; asleep:
You are in me.

You are in all of us.
A piece of you in every particle of our beings
the first dust of our coalescence into roving bodies.
Like the Bang that became planets;
to our cells, the birth of the Universe.

You are That to us.
Stepping upon you, my feet absorb your dust,
drink you in. My cells
every part of me, inhales you.
You pass through the walls of each tiny nucleus,
and osmosis reminds my mitochondria of you.

Electrons buzz with it, whizzing madly with excitement...
but quietly, protons hum with memory. Every atom,
every particle, every corpuscle, before knowing only dun;
and black; dry and wet and green, and cold;
tastes red dust, red soil
the blood of our Birth,
and knows you.

i step from an alien metal bird, never knowing, till i landed,
i was returning to you.
i soak up the pungency of air thick
with ancient beginnings;
cues i never knew i knew.
i breath you in; smell you, taste you, absorb you;
recall you.

i am relieved of a pain i did not know
i had always bourn.
a gnawing homesickness, undiagnosed, unaware, being eased.
You touch me, embrace me; my Soul rings:
a bell-like instrument struck with a note never before drawn,
once feared; now known.

i never knew you.
Never knew, when i came, what i would find.
i had forgotten.
i am here, Mother.
i am back, your child long gone.

i remember touching you.
i remember.
i touch you. You touch me.
i fold myself into your embrace;

You are a part of me again.
i have returned.
i am come Home.