island folk

peninsula of forest and swamp,
hundreds of thousands of years ago.
pre-historic wanderers come
seeking a new home.
arrows of flint hunt boar and deer,
then beakers and burial mounds,
copper, bronze and iron found,
sheep make pastures, woods are cleared,
tribes mark out their patch of ground,
farm the land and its yours, my dear.

peninsula became island
eight thousand years ago,
and wanderers continued
to come over in boats.

island split to many parts,
anglo-saxons, britons, picts,
romans, vikings sift and mix.
invasion, fighting, boundaries shift,
between dozens of kingdoms
and dozens of thrones,
and only in century seventeen
can we call great britain whole.

and with all this flow and contest,
at what point in time
can anyone fix the contents,
declare they can define
the identity of the residents
of an island of the mind?
for what more is a nation
than a fiction of yours and mine?

and over time people
kept coming in boats,
and these "foreign" "alien" "immigrants",
find access seems closed
with new explanation
"you're not british enough;
go home".
but over the centuries
even they would become
part of the flavour
of the island nation

and the islanders built their own boats,
sent them far away.
used technology and violence,
strategy and trade
to wield power over foreign lands,
call it empire and congratulate
themselves for superiority,
devise and rule new countries.
war and oppression is better
abroad than at home.

but when people from those places
came to the island great,
they met with suspicion:
"this is our place".

and even after empire's died,
islanders keep their back hands tied
in other countries far and wide.
weapons trade and power pacts,
old systems still reap benefits;
global flow is complex,
witness: butterfly effect.

and economic low there
and political unrest there
can never ever be declared
as entirely separate
from that little old island.

so when the latest people want
to come over in boats,
stop losing sight of history,
oh my dear island folk.
migration's not a new thing;
it's the egg of your yoke.
so see beyond the sea wall
and bridge the fucking moat