In our country we are the quiet ones
Even when she sets off first,
she's in my ear.
My mother’s sounds are high and fast and loving.
She is the ursine prowl of night.
More sensed than heard.
A bat pollinating strings of mangoes.
An elevator
’
s
glassy
rush
and
its
return
.
A bullrushes’ nod.
A solitary bee’s whine.
Vivacious, my mother, loud the crunch
of icebergs between her molars.
A beach in Mauritius calling child,
you nuh come home since long.
Mangrovestans
Embassies set the evidence
alight. Do we, undocumented, exist?
Death-stalked, shall we
like mudskippers, abandon the sea
to nest in the trees?
Mangroves learned
the hard way, in the last mass extinction.
They left the land,
creeping from inland forest
halfway into the sea,
turning topsy turvy into the tides,
holding up roots above the soil.
What better way to survive
a flood than by drowning?
What does we owe to one
who still warms his hands
over the embers of our house?
___________________
Clementine E Burnley is a Cameroon born British poet, writer, mother and trainee
psychotherapist. Her most recent work can be found in Magma Poetry, The Poetry Review,
and Writers Mosaic.
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