In the oceanography
of time we are the third
island from the core

we stole the land
from the In-digenes
who were always
here before us,
we called them In-dians
because we were from outside
or called them natives
because they were born here
and we haven’t been born yet.

2.
Who are we who stumbled
on this archipelago,
rafting across the great silence,
riding the cosmic rays
desperate to find
a mirror to gaze into
that would shows us our faces,
tell us who we are.

3.
I think we are the fetal mind
of what one day will be
the true humanity, sometimes
you hear our heartbeat
soft in the noise of all that happens.
Christ and Buddha showed the way
to what might yet become—
but we storybook’d the one
and killed the other though on
the third day he rose again
into us ever after, hear him?
or is that just my heart beating? 

4.
So who on earth
are we? Children
maybe, because
we keep asking questions,
good children if we do,
or bad if we think we know the answers
and insist. Be quiet,
little one, we say to ourselves
when we should say Shout
your questions,
the night is waiting for them,
each night a different
answer and we live.

27 November 2020