Mike Klassen is not only the Team Leader of Agricultural Value Chains of Engineers Without Borders Canada in Ghana.
He’s also a slam poet.
Here’s his poem from EWB’s recent West Africa Retreat. Thanks for sharing it Mike!
Let it Flow
It’s early in the morning, alarm clock warning, I’m yawning.
Awake and alive, sleep in my eyes, blinking light in my mind- but I
Can’t explain or entertain any sane thing but the stainless
Tap Dripping and dropping, teasing the sink a taste at a time-
Let it flow.
When the pressure builds up, and your head fills up, and the going feels tough
Let it go.
Radar signal honin, getting zoning to the moment where you feel every tone and
The bass of the beat meats the pace of your feet and your face-ing the scene of the place in between
Gotta pick it up, get it up, giddy-up the pick-up truck,
Switching gears, squishing fears, getting clear the prickling is near:
As your listening ears make way for glistening tears
Let it flow.
But what is this poem? Other than a home for my own water?
Is it a drip of the hip, a drop of the hop or a puddle of muddled thoughts?
Or maybe it’s nothing more than a plain container, a network of life pipes,
Vehicle for your first ideas and your last hopes, past rope-buckets to clay pot filters.
Criss crossing from source to the sink, serving the faucet you deposit your faith in.
Let it flow.
Patient anticipation is the state I’m in.
Waiting.
Blatant in its arrival, the rain survives the impact of its fall.
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Have some poems you treasure or you’ve written that you’d like to share with fellow aid workers and do-gooders? Please send them my way at email.howmatters@gmail.com!
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