7am Yap

i’m in my bedroom now…beyond the window
Lies a dream…Oh let me go to YAP !

And there…

Passed Mangrove swamps
that line the shore,
Through the savanna on I’ll go..to climb
through scented flora on the rolling hills…
and stand atop Mount Taabiywoi.

Micronesia… ‘Stone Money’ land…
where stones are found
along the ‘Banks’ of ferns and undergrowth,

Slim disks of Rai
The Bitcoins of their day…
And like the Bitcoin, …the Rai was valued on a trust.

…And this was long before the Bitcoin
was a twinkle in Satoshi’s eye

Oh let me go to Yap…

I’ll swim above the coral reefs.
And learn from fish…to dance and writhe
in waves as warm as tepid soup

….I’ll string a thousand sea shells as my Gaw,
And sleep….beneath a palm leaf sky.
in an old tibnaw.

And in the idyll of my dream….may I forget
The colonisers ever came…to ‘modernise’
and ruin a way of life before
The World’s unseeing eyes..

Kristine Byrne. 12th March. 2020.