Good Medicine

This is not new,

this joy.

It crossed water.

It survived the crossing.

It arrived with nothing

but itself

and rebuilt everything

from that.

Look at the beads —

each one a continent of memory,

strung by hands that knew

what mattered enough to carry.

Look at the cloth wrapped proud

around the crown of the head,

saying: I come from somewhere

that knew how to adorn itself

before your world had a word for beautiful.

These faces are carved

the way the old ones carved —

line by line,

patient,

certain that what they were making

was holy.

And the laugh —

oh, the laugh —

it is Yoruba and Zulu and Wolof,

it is the kora played too fast to follow,

it is the market at dawn

when everyone knows everyone

and the news is good.

It is what remained

when they took everything else.

They could not take this:

the way two people

who know where they are from

turn to each other

and find the whole continent

still there —

laughing,

undefeated,

adorned.