Returning Home After The Hurricane Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

We need to write new songs,
For those still to come to our land
Songs of a truth we heard told
Whispered in the wind on lonely paths
Leading us to a future on the road home
Where girls and boys swam undressed,
In the fashions of the unheard of world,
We have come to know.

Who said we would go to sleep unsure,
If tomorrow would yield a harvest to feed us all
After stiffing up storms that sink whole towns under,
Where torrents fall when hurricanes hurl houses in the air?

We need to sing songs that tell of the loss
Of the past in which we danced on porches dry,
Eating barbecues of venison from our forests
Caught in traps where poachers were not hated,
As we do now in this quiet sneaking in.

The songs we sing will be borne on wings of birds,
That once sang on our trees where spanish moss
Hangs down in a sadness that tells our story,
Whispering to tell us everything is gone,
Leaving our treasures only in our minds.

The tired walk to a home washed away by whooshing winds
Looks deserted even to the deer which danced in our absence,
For we are walking home like tired saints on a lonely march
For if we had had stayed we were to end up washed away,
Like the lone piece of the roof we see near the road,
For it got here after the rains subsided,
No longer swimming in the mud, in which it now lay.