Poets Pub 2019 Biggest Competition Ever - Vol Two

Ancestry (emily-ada) Wk - 5

Ancestry

The river's mouth is a gash

that extends from the nerve, the root

bleeding from the soul of the land.

We used to leap like dolphins, launch ourselves

over and over the line of the wound,

wound round each other tighter and tighter-

bold in our youth; such confidence assumed the thread

that it would last forever. That the severance of land alike

would not grow, like continents, apart? One slashing slice.

Yet now, now! We put our ears to water.

Our throats are riven, our gashes

reach down to the root of us,

the small of our backs.

Now! We beat fists, our determination on rocks, on sand.

Vibration under sea-beds,

I want to tell you something;

but all you hear is a ghost instead. And the sad echo

never reaches me. Sound waves unravel like thread.

We are galaxies on galactic seas,

the blood between us a gulf

that light and time

alone can cross.

Life, blink, gone.