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 indoctrinated 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 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.