Hiraeth

Credit

I still know how to draw those maps, boundaries

of vanished places, craving deep-rooted trees

whistling out of sight now, the slight lift of dust

feathered into a storm, fleshed to grey and rust,

the north winds in the long grass at different degrees.

Rinse. Repeat. Repetition doesn’t change things,

nor needle-sharp new words, seed no new meanings;

the landforms, the contours, the topography

still the same, guinea corn grits crumbing my knee,

an empty clothes line bejewelled with starlings.

The world thrashes, then falls back into its groove,

only a tidal murmur persists, out to prove

every line washes away, but then the sands

reconfigure into the same coasts, same lands

without the pen or my hands having to move.

Hiraeth is actually a Welsh word, I've no idea how the Welsh got so Bengali!! Or how this Bengali got so Welsh without ever setting a foot in Wales?! :) 

It means a hard to pin down homesickness/nostalgia for times and places and homelands lost.  I have been craving me some Africa this week, well, a spike in the hiraeth really, because who, having lived there once, doesn't crave Africa all the time, right? The grandmotherland of us all and the silver lining of whole lifetimes.

It's been an eventful November so far, both the outer world and inner thrashed, but now back into the groove hopefully, running smooth and low key.  Hope yours is running smooth too, at the exact key you want.