My skin colour is stained
With an orange circle round my mouth
Each time I take a sip of Fanta drink
My skin colour is not buff
Neither crimson nor cerise but mixed
With a tint of blonde on my head
My skin colour is not difficult to tell
When I look at myself backward in the mirror
My father’s skin is made darker by the sun
Charcoal black when he sits by the fire
Then turned grey with dust of the season
Like the bark of our cherished baobab trees
Baobab trees firmly rooted to mother earth
Lives for hundreds or a thousand years
Witnessed the passing of generations
Tracing our long lineage to where it began
We cook the leaves with millet and peanuts
And drink the juicy fruits after benechin meal
The cotton tree challenges the elephant tree
But can’t say no to baobab dotted everywhere
Whose trunks hide the faces of people gone by
And the secrets passed down by our ancestors
Let us dance round the cherished baobab trees
Our ancestors who died old were buried there
The baobab tree sheds it leaves in dry season
And retains water from drying out when at rest
Prepares for the coming cycles of rain and flood
Men build bantaba, the people’s congress by the road
To pass the messages across, as we learn with dismay
What baobab trees have seen, and wish we were there
Comments
This is a very skilled write,
mellifluous and rewarding to read. But I'm not sure of the meaning. The first two stanzas seem to indicate that you are separated from the time and lineage so well evoked in the following three stanzas, but not how you feel about it.
Through the eye of a kid...
This piece is written through the eyes of a kid from mixed marriage. He attempts to re-affirm his root by linking his lighter colour to his father in a setting where everyone is darker and then tracing it to the origin using baobab tree. Thank you for understanding the piece and for your comments. Best wishes.
tr
Yes...
The piece could be separated to form two, of colour, with the dotted baobab on the landscape and and heritage, by tracing of root to a particular location and continent. It tries to handle what is going on in the mind of a child, ambivalent, I may say, and so attempts to reaffirm his root. Thank you for being there always, and for you comments.
Each time I see a baobab tree, my mind go to the age and how many generations had gone by. It fascinates me. You call the one in your compound Bonsai. Where did you get it? I mean its origin.
Best wishes.
tr
i love this write
although for me, there are two poems here
i really think the first two verses do and should stand on their own
- as with the last three...
well done
(lol - i like the first poem best, although both are great)
love judy
love judy
Thank you for your comments. I see the point you make, may be it has to do with what goes on in my head as Ian puts it. I should separate my feelings from my thought. Best wishes.
tr
I don't see two poems,
to put it bluntly it reads to me as though mixed blood makes you feel detached from the roots of the baobab tree. The two parts seem separate because you don't connect them with your feelings about it.
Yes.
My patron and great mentor is right. A mixed blood feeling separated and yet connected to the roots with his father embodied by the baobab tree. The obvious separate content of the first two stanzas with the last three attempts to evoke the feeling. Baobab tree usually comes with a large trunk, small branches and leaves that are shaded during the dry season to help it retain water in the trunk. The last three stanzas attempts to do this.
Bantaba is a shade, men sit to drink green tea and chat. Some of them are constructed by baobab trees located by the roadside.
Best wishes.
tr