Plantation Race

I was born of the plantation race
A quiet dream obscured underneath the sugar cane's shade,
While cracked bare feet raked
The red dusty soil
During entranced toil
That would one day awake
And feel the glorious sun and wind kissing their face.

Far and away from familiar place,
Where the scent, sight, sound, taste of the air
Did not share the flavor of wide tobacco fields,
Did not invoke prideful duty
Of the carabao pulling with strong struggle,
Hearts long to return to what was real
To let go of the sepia memories printed like fading photos.
To go back to the embrace of the mother, the home.

But the words she had told
On those days of departure,
Life must go on for a wandering farmer,
Searching for new land to watch seeds grow.

For home has gone barren
Centuries of dreams gone arid
Like an endless desert
No more water could feed the leaves
To flutter and wave at the heavens
Because no tears of joy flowed from her face,
To satiate thirsty open spaces.
No ditches could be dug
To fill water jugs
Because Mother had not sung to hungry babies
That they could be strong where they came from.

But instead they must become
The foreigners tilling another's field.
Only thing that kept their bodies working
Was the dreams.
They were like the beads of sweat
Cooling exhausted faces.
Only thing that soothed the displacement
Was the imagination
That the new generation would be so tall
Like the sugar cane stalks
Rising above the ranks
Cause the plantation race bent their backs
So they could carry me to see past the obstruction
Of thick rows of fields.
So I could see the expansive sky
Instead of the confining tangles of cane
That was their pain,
Scratching their dry skin
Calloused by the discipline
Of centuries being beaten by somebody else's sun.

But only now does the drawing of blood
Onto foreign soil breed fruition.
For I am born of the plantation race
Like the tall stalk of sugar cane
Rising above their heads.
The seed they have planted with their toils
The product of dreams cultivated in diasporic soils.
I know reach for the sky
And soak in the suns and winds kisses
So it cools those before me.
I grab rain clouds and squeeze them to roll down my skin
To irrigate my feet,
Because they are rooted in the footsteps
Of laborers who dreamed
to bloom
within dusty fields.