Written piece
Band of Threads
Malachi Smith
Jamaica
About this piece
The poem captures the ethos of the people of the Commonwealth in totality - tongue, history and the thread that binds them together. It celebrates the whole and is ambitious in its prognosis as it boldly reminds us that we are all flesh of the same thread.
Band of Threads
Mother gives birth to fifty-six children
from blood and soil
and tongues of indigo black
skins of the magnetic spectrum
binding, joining island hands
continents and oceans under an umbrella.
That covers the whole
creating a line dance
a movement of threads
like the bang of creation
lingers from cape to coast
gold to cane fields
sugar and banana plantations.
Some roads smooth like nylon
other bumpy full of turns and twists
some silk, some polyester
some with split ends
some straight, some nappy.
Roads ropes from the same thread
like the webbed feet of ducklings
smashing molecules
mending water into an optic reality
like the feet of the sun rising and walking
and cannot find the set of her colonies.
Peoples born of sails and whips
salt and joy
and shackle torn skin
into books
into stories
fibers into yarn
threads of history
stitching flesh into one body