By Bayo Akomolafe

Jo delAmor asked, “So who are you in this moment as an emergent being connected through time?”

I am an ongoing-ness without a name.
I am a playful dancing,           infiltration of identity
that refuses to alight at a point,
that refuses to succeed
or to tether itself to a metaphysics of dots.

I am a lingering meandering line
that is at once
father and son,
brother, and sister,
mother and father,
uncle and auntie,
atom and mountain,
spirogyra and human,
and poet and philosopher,
and perpetually confused partner.

And all of these
are the on-rolling
………..and rolling
………………..and tumbling forces
and unspeakabilities
that bring me here
today.

This poem was part of a talk given at the Gaian Gathering of the Work That Reconnects Network in November 2023.  A video of the full talk is available on the WTR Network website here.

Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California.  See www.bayoakomolafe.net  and www.emergencenetwork.org.