Sankofa Time
Abstract
:- I remember only that I have arrived
- and that I must not forget…
- The wind blows the waves across the Atlantic
- and without a boat I drift in spirit and in thought
- towards an unknown land of people taken,
- of people sold, of people with brown skin and bright eyes
- and names lost and homes lost and customs altered
- and rituals forgotten.
- … I strain to remember.
- I struggle in the present to understand
- your passage here to this land,
- to this new home.
- My world
- has been created by your very survival
- by your ability to be African in America,
- your ability to plant, to grow, to build,
- to give birth, to give praise, to sing and dance with life
- and stare past death’s pale skin and
- experience the communion of life on other shores.
- There is much to remember and much to recover
- So I will follow your spirit across the Atlantic
- and listen to your stories… scattered in time,
- joining me to you, to then, to now.
- I see words in the wind and
- hear voices in grains of rice and
- see other faces in my mother’s smile.
- I am going back because I must.
- I am going back because I cannot go further
- until I return.
- It’s Sankofa Time
- and I’m going back
- so that We
- can go forward.
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
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Jackson, A.T. Sankofa Time. Genealogy 2020, 4, 105. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy4040105
Jackson AT. Sankofa Time. Genealogy. 2020; 4(4):105. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy4040105
Chicago/Turabian StyleJackson, Antoinette T. 2020. "Sankofa Time" Genealogy 4, no. 4: 105. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy4040105
APA StyleJackson, A. T. (2020). Sankofa Time. Genealogy, 4(4), 105. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy4040105