The Lost Beloved

You are born like a young orphaned sparrow
You want to fly high above the green trees
But your wings are small, and your eyes dewy
You find the going rough and your steps slow

Your mother is too frail to care for you alone
You do not know your father who has long gone
You have no one to lean on when you stall
Only your mother picks you up when you fall

What you will grow up to be, you do not know
You suffer much but you try hard not to show
Yet all through these years you have survived 
You are tough and you are fighting to stay alive.

Your young life you spend in a little grass house
Perched on a mountain top covered in misty haze
It’s cold at night as the wind blows through the grass
The house timber is old and the walls have cracks

You have no blankets to cover your small frame
Your clothes are thin and your mattress the same
Your bed is hard, your pillow only a pile of rags
Your shirt is adorn but your pants look like bags

Your women raise every day before dawn to cook 
From dawn to dusk, they feed, they work and toil
Your men, they labor, they wait and they look.
Your poor children, they play but only with soil.

Your ancestors, you believe they are in Heaven
But where are they really now, your brethren?
You give them food, you make them offering
But they are quiet, they do not see your suffering.

Some of your people live on strangers’ charity 
Wondering how they can ever keep up to form
Yet you are like the lone flower under a canopy
The single palm tree battling in a heavy storm

You want a home, you look for somewhere bright.
You are cold in the shadow, you need some light
You want a tiny patch to wake up on at dawn
Yet you can find little, little to call your own.

Many of your sons have lost their ways, undone.
Your daughters are forgotten, brushed aside, alone
Your elders are confused, with traditions denied
Yet they keep going, for fear they will all soon die.

You have no past, your past is only in your mind
You search for a future, hoping it will be kind
To your men, their wives and their many children.
But they only have the present, a present ill-begotten.

Your traditions are rich, but you have lost many. 
You feel scared, you know soon no one will know any.
Your young prefer the odd customs of foreigners
Soon they will to each other become but strangers.

You keep calling everyone to stay together, to unite.
You want the flock unbroken, the doors to shut tight.
But the floods have broken through all your fences
You call for help, but no one comes to your defences.

Where to from here, what can you do, you ask?
Why has God given you such a heavy task?
Are you alone in your struggles and will you survive?
On Reckoning Day, how many of you will arrive?

Before parting, my good people, I want you to know
Sad is my heart, dark is my soul, so filled with sorrow
But so happy, so grateful I am to be part of you
Your love is deep so much like the oceans blue 
I thank you for being so welcoming and so true

The world and its unyielding time continue to spin
I want to say: “do not to give up, and never give in
You have the strength that comes from deep within
Keep up your good cause, hang on to your strong will.
Do it, do it and one day your dreams may all be real”.