Roots

I come from a city
with people born on a blacklist.
I come from a country
which has since ceased to exist.
I come from a culture
where nothing is what it seems,
full of loud delusions and stifling truths,
where language conceals.

I grew on an ice flow that was cracking and breaking in spring.
I had to grow my roots wide.
So far that they reached different shores.
So strong that they gripped, and mauled, and changed the shoreline.
So solid that I became a bridge.

Now, bridges are never safe.
Never as safe as the solid land –
or at least they don’t seem to be.
They sway in the wind,
they rely on a few points of contact,
they have to strive just to stay in place.

You could transport a bridge to a safer place,
sell it like the proverbial Brooklyn Bridge
and make some cash on the way,
or move it for real –
to a safe harbour, out of the wind.

But even a broken bridge across the gap
has more purpose than a bridge on solid land,
it remains rooted in both shores,
forever a possibility.