#5 Hallowed Ground

While walking through the city,

have you ever heard that sound?

A slight echo of a distant memory

rushing deep from underground.

The shuffle of our busy feet

manages to mask the wail

of the coral shell

pressed to the lips of a princely rebel

who from freedom came,

and for it,

whose life was laid.

When driving through the country side,

have you ever just happened to see,

the transient shapes and forms of hands that laboured so we could dare to dream?

The rolling hills and valleys low

have immortalized their will,

in textured folds breathing life

into their greatest hope…

Us.

Yet we ignore them still.

When you look across the ocean,

standing on bricks of time,

found on windy summits in the south east

picturesque against Atlantic tides,

have you ever felt the descent of shadows,

gathering slowly under the sun’s calm shine?

Of those who first uttered “Wa’ladli”

the precursor to national pride.

They first said “Our own”

This land.

Yours and mine.

Yet sometimes it seems as if it weren't true,

as if we've forgotten those times,

as if we deem them as unreal,

as hallucinations of an imaginative mind.

For not many have heard that coral shell,

taken long ago from our seas,

very few have been compelled to listen

to its emotive drone in entirety.

Very few have seen the portraits

of those callused hands that bled,

whose eyes watch us fiercely, angry now,

for mocking what that love and sacrifice meant.

Not many have felt those shadows

of those unnamed, true discoverers from long before

who stood united chanting “Wa’ladli”

This land.

Our own.

Mine and yours.

So sometimes it seems as if it weren't true,

as if we've forgotten those times,

as if we deem them as unreal,

as hallucinations of an imaginative mind.

For many will be born, will grow,

and will surely die,

without having found

that this rock of pink sands,

trade winds and gentle lands,

of clear seas and oceans combined,

of hidden wealth and strength by design,

of unexplored potential

that blindly reaps what we sow;

this rock…

that cannot grow,

until we decide to grow.

For many will be born,

and many will grow, and die

not realizing our reflection is found,

beneath our own busy feet;

all the while,

forgotten.

Fragile, yet unyielding.

Hallowed ground.

My Inspiration: Shirley's Heights, Antigua

  (2014)

© KohylahPiper 2015