why do people imagine
that we forgot?

as they were loaded
onto ships, they didn’t just
forget their ancestors
in the very moment
they needed them most.

would you not cry
out to your kin?
they did not forget
the taste of their grandmother’s
cooking. they didn’t forget
their mother’s piercing gaze
as she looked out
upon the land.

they brought their traditions,
their stories
our traditions, our stories
the memory of wiser hands
making sustenance
and when they cradled their babies on these shores they sang songs from before

whether we know the words or not,
those songs were sung into our bones
the ancestors hum them now

sometimes the taste
like crying out
and songs for cradled babies
we sit with our ears
to the ground, what
we seek already within us
a piercing gaze
as we look out upon the land.