What grows in a grave 

and gives life?  

Torn, this tuber— 

this thread-barked Black Whisp 

this pale fleshed expatriate. 

What could not swim 

but did not drown— 

survived the Crossing;  

defended by the Captives— 

for hundreds of years? 

What gifted history its future  

on the long Passage—buried,   

to be born? Unearthed, in perpetuity  

our Guinea ties, tethered 

four hundred years. 

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Image by Yender Fonseca