A Song of Redemption
A Song of Redemption
by Geoffrey Philp
"No matter where you come from, as long as you're a black man, you're an African."
~Peter Tosh
"Brown man, wha de I a defend?"~Peter Tosh
greeted me in the afternoons while I unlaced
my cleats after a game of scrimmage—skins
versus shirts—when that wizened Wailer
beardsman, locksman, Rastaman, Seeco, sweat
dripping from hands that had taught Bob
percussion, schooled me in the teachings
of Marcus. Those were hard lessons
when with all the drills I had practiced
with my coaches, those years of privileged
innocence, I still couldn’t touch the ball
when Seeco shielded it with his spindly legs
that had trod through the hills of Babylon,
and scampered down the streets of Trench Town.
But he was patient with me, night after night
when moonlight dripped from tamarind
leaves on our crowns. Like the night at a dance
in August Town, when an old mother held my face
between her palms and interrogated me.
“What a quality young man, like you, doing
down here in the dungle?” the crone asked
as she ran her fingers through my “good
hair.” And my only answer was the music
that had drawn me to zinc fences and dusty
lanes— looking for an answer to the riddle
that confounded our lives: could this earth
that my grandfather, who tilled blades of cane
while the other planted a tree on his back,
be reclaimed with Sankeys of redemption.
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