We build galleries down the local,

fill them with punters and pictures,

hoping to watch

our neighbourhoods

grow culture.

 

At home, we sit together,

weaving something to last

forever – a song,

a poem, a meal.

 

Singing to remember,

painting for posterity,

we sharpen ourselves

into language

whittling legacy into

the local dialect.

 

Dialogue has opened gates.

We are giving birth

to stories,

we are the wind

and why behind

memory.

 

It will take a village

to raise the bridges,

so we write

our faces into geography.

Somewhere down the road,

we will gather around statues

resembling our family trees.

 

Community is a verb,

Future a story

planted in hope,

watered by rain,

nurtured by the will

to be witnessed.

Image credit: Jessica Knowlden on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saili Katebe was the Where are you really from? project poet during 2020. Listen to him reading the poem on this podcast: Giving Birth to Stories: Black and Brown creatives in the countryside . Read Louisa’s interview with Saili here.