Traditions

I fear I am a poet, tradition bound

to mostly ignore systems – documents -

though I’ll use paper to scribble around

to hold onto some meanings, and moments.

I do use paper, I will freely admit

and I don’t abhor the screen, I’m using one -

but some nerve rebels if I’m asked to show it.

I won’t comply. That too is tradition.

You see, paper’s fragile. Identity

is carried somewhere else, in the stories

of foremothers travelling from one city

to the next, braiding streams, estuaries.

Through many rivers, borders, crisscrossed lands;

tradition too, the tangling of those strands.