My son’s birth makes me grateful for my mother
It transforms time to a before, a now and what is to come
Teaches me what I would do for him
Awakes a worry about what awaits
What kind of future are we making?
I mouth the words
Of a language taken
My baby continues the connection
He is the land, the earth, the water
What kind of future are we making?
He mimics my mouth
I see his grandfather in it
Hear the words my grandmother never spoke
There are thousands of years in those eyes
What kind of future are we making?
‘and he has your complexion’ a midwife laughs
When I tell her the meaning of his name
My skin will never be black enough to answer for living in this city place
But the stories told about this place don’t start from the start
What kind of future are we making?
I will take him
To touch the soil and place his feet in the water
Greet the land of our ancestors
Bury his placenta in the earth
What kind of future are we making?
This year of his birth is also
The death of rivers and of land cracking and dry
Of seas swelling and oceans rising
Of people fleeing conflict and drowning at sea or being turned away
What kind of future are we making?
They cut down birthing trees
To build roads
That will get people places more quickly
As if this is not a place
What kind of future are we making?
But there are many histories hidden –
Stories are kept in the earth
In the roots of the trees, in the water and in the sky
There are answers to our questions here
What kind of future are we making?
When the birds have nowhere to come home to
And the reefs are white as bones
When oil and gold and coal and minerals and food and water are gone
Plastic money will make no body rich
What kind of future are we making?
When he is born I place the possum skin against him
I wonder what in the world
Could be more important
Than what kind of future we leave