Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

Magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads

connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Mekisha Talbert is a writer, chef, potter, and farmer.

In this poetic essay,

Mekesha wades into the liminal, haunted space

that exists between water and black memory.

As she navigates the slippage between past and present,

life and death.

She embarks on her own return to the water's edge.

I went down to the river to remind myself of the other language, Jerome Ellis.

I was born a few minutes from the Potomac River. Less than a month ago, I packed what I had and headed back to Virginia. I knew some of what I'd find

there. Oysters, northern water snakes, an array of fish that have made their way through centuries,

bass, carp, herring, shad. I knew I'd revisit my family's ghosts

and a river that was once home

to a human and more than human ecosystem

that could ensnare any enslaved black person

seeking safe passage.

Water carries an edge for me. enslaved black person seeking safe passage.

Water carries an edge for me.

Seems to me a dying place.

...