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I used to dance about a' boy’.
Mixed Media. Straw, clay bowl, and vintage tea chest.
Carolyn Savidge 2025.
Death Vessel
I used to dance about a ‘boy’
From slavery, a homeland, far away,
transported then, ‘cross vast oceans,
did I think, while dancing, of ravaged bodies,
skin bruised like plums, about the swamps and graves?
Here right now, under the bed, in tattered box,
the hat I wore, some 40 years ago,
dancing under the burning sun.
Ruthlessly I now dissect, to clarify my wonderings.
This fragile whisper made with clay and straw,
his fate embodied, boxed, fired, and stitched.
My blindness glimpsed ‘tween shafts and lattice,
my innocence colour blind even then.
Of distant oceans, dark bodies beaten, confined, bent.
Futile resistance and dying wish, to return home.
All this encased in a whisper, sufficient those which stifled screams,
but meanwhile shamed in my not knowing.
The process is not pretty.
A feeling of weight, of time passed.
I feel the wind upon my back, and I am left,
custodian of a rendered hat, scant memory for departed souls.
But hold, for later that same ‘boy’ became a chief, and, prospering, with Palm Oil wealth untold as Ja Ja of Opobo, he was the King.
Meanwhile now distant mangoes fall,
Spices enrich the rice ‘n peas,
and music soars, though species die, and forests burn.
And I sip tea.
