Roots-

They told me my colour,
Was like dirt on the ground,
To be stamped on, and trod on-
Had no dignity on the land.

But my mother told me,
It was the colour of the land,
This dull brown, they tramp on,
From it, We will rise.

They told me to back off,
Books weren’t for my kind,
It was picking time in lane’s hill,
Cotton’s all that’s worth my time.

My mother laughed and countered,
Without me there’d be no kind,
For books can’t feed their stomach,
They’d always need my kind.

They said I had no history,
My past was a hole in time,
An arrow which hit its target,
We were a lost- lost tribe.

My mother shook with fury,
At the claim we had no roots;
History’s filled with us she raged,
Our tears, our blood, our joys.

From then, I hugged the library
Time for Cotton, time for books;
When they claim I have no history,
I write out to them of our roots.

The above image is courtesy of All black everything. Tumblr