Children Of Eve Poem by Martin Ward

Children of Eve

Lifejacket mountain
cries for Eve:
she who travelled
from Africa.
Mother of us all.

Against all odds,
the only one
to birth us cousins
from the plains.

We have escaped,
they have not, yet.

Tossed aside
as rubbish,
strewn across
Greek islands.

A journalist
climbs the summit
to shock us currently,
AC/ DC.

How many of my ancestors
died in transit: flailing
in some watery abyss or
falling from some precipice,
to find themselves a home?

When I turn brown
on holiday, basking
on some Spanish beach,
my thoughts turn
to Eve and her children:
my mothers and fathers lines,
which trace through factory workers;
toilers of the soil; kings and queens.

Where have we arrived at,
that insurmountable
plastic monument
to Eve?