Riddle, riddle

A poem about belonging.

“Simpson . . . realized that he was no longer studying a random process. The larvae chose their destination, relying on some cue. Some sense. So what were the baby fish sensing?” Sing Like Fish, Amorina Kingdon

They lived in a tin of expectation:
their own. On a dark new moon
they come back home. Larvae are safer
out in the ocean, a little storm
of falling blossoms. No one knows how far
the babies go, how they return, 
whether water is vanishing. 
Generations have grown – 
Sambagira. Give me the riddle.

Aha bakahabaha kubarabe bahabahire
n’oha owahabahire? 
Was this place given to you, and if it 
was given to you who gave it? •

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This poem came together in fragments from three sources: my notes from Rukiga language lessons, the nonfiction book Sing Like Fish, and my own freewrites. The collage below shows these different voices colliding:

I enjoyed the process of making this poem: gathering existing documents and making sense of the fragments. I’ve been writing into distances more directly these last couple of months. It’s a comfort to find everything else that migrates keeping me company: birds, fish, languages, memory.

Have you learned any riddles or tongue twisters that hold poetic truths?