Chaka Ode To Home 

Nourishment is the arms of your mum...

A calm exhalation in loving memory of,

A held moment - still by the peach fireplace,

Of tight and knowing embrace.

An indoctrined truth that your heart isn't in famine,

As while you journey to find your own acceptance;

It's been found long ago in others:

She gives me food after her nightshift,

Absent of darkness,

Just sung mantras,

And effortless commitment to teethy smiles and Jamaican laughter,

She uses pastel le creuset hung by the hood,

Once every three days she fills tupperware,

As 'Pickney dem' are still growing,

And I gorge in competition against myself,

I'm still growing and still growing into those clothes bought sizes too big,

My identity a turbine of shared influences;

But this food is mine.

She gives me food,

Her hands tiled like the church,

Her reach tentative,

expressing her messages in duty.

My resort left in turmoil by hurricane each visit,

Her youthful energy radiates through; Her standing, her holding, her lacridity,

She was the first trillionaire before Apple,

Through 50 babies smacked and infinite pans washed,

This food is a beating heart,

Born from the the wind and the Severn oxbow,

Born from refinement and the polygamy of food.

But this food is mine.

She gives me food,

The machinations of impossible journey and connection,

Of forbidden fruit and foreign love,

I receive a rich tapestry - illustrating wars of attrition and ambivilance,

The citrus a swathe of tenor,

A gong bath of ardiente and flash of falda,

I'm wrapped in a soft dough of three...

A spectre and Spirit by nature,

but our food - a bridge. 

To presence.

To Home.