A Little Bit of Faith: The Passage

IN HONOR OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH

The Passage

Cries in the night so loud they are heard across the ocean. My people cry remembering a time   when they were footloose and fancy free. The memory of their continent flowing with gold, ivory, and grain leaves them with empty spaces in their souls.

Cries in the night so loud they are heard across the ocean. Not knowing what lies ahead, struggling to have an inch of space to call their own, they watch as their women give birth on floors filled with excrement while new life takes in deep breaths. The colorless people call them black gold.

Cries in the night so loud they are heard across the ocean. My people still remember their mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers. Although they do not recognize the new frontier, the colorless people stripped them of their native tongue and forced them to learn European languages—English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. But the languages that linger in their souls are Fula, Shona, Twi, and many more.

The cries in the night still cross the ocean searching for children lost in the new world. Generations of captive people, cultures, families, and native tongues destroyed forever. The ocean turns red because it is filled with their blood.  Lives were lost too soon! Children were born into a life of enslavement, women lost their dignity, and men lost their honor.

Their cries still cross the ocean and now I am and we are the people they cry for.

*Collections of Colleen White’s poetry can be found on Amazon. Look for My Psalms: A Collection of Poems; All My Love; and My Little Book of Poems: Poetry for Children.