What shall we name this forest?

By

Kitaka Alex

My grandmother with wrinkled oval face, a prominent forehead and on her head promiscuously sits a thicket of hair, grey, long and unkempt. She says, her voice husky, “Son, your eyes uphold with them the lanterns we held in the 50’s,

We glimpsed in every corner of the forest, we were never timorous about getting lost in the forest.”

“The forest knew us, the forest knew our dialect, and we spoke the same language. We spoke the same poetry. We spoke the same prose, better still, we held the same dictionary, it was neither long man nor short man. It was forest man dictionary. When we cried, the forest cried with us too. When we laughed, the forest laughed with us too, we were one with the forest, and the forest was one with us:

Each single tree in the forest belonged to each of us,

Each single root that held the might of  a shoot, held the might of our souls.”

“But now”, as she says this, tears stream down her fragile cheeks, she labours to briskly wipe them away before I see them, but my eyes had already stolen enough of the scene.

“But now” brings about the aura surrounding a fish jumping about for survival on land, knowing very well that its adaptation on land is impossible.

“But now my son, the forest no longer knows us, we speak with la-di-da tones.”

“We no longer know the forest, we are like empty pots with bottoms kissed by the fire. We are alien to the forest. The forest is alien to us. We walk not with our legs but with our hands and the fingers are that of a lion. They are angry to scratch through the forest and pick the least of unripe fruits. We walk with our pugnacious eyes to clear down any forest with a vision of making a better world through constructing buildings and industries. Coming up with constructions that bear heights outcompeting that of trees. We endeavour to laugh, try to show that the forest understands us, that we comprehend why winds lost the calmness and the sun in fury throws at us rod hot rays, why the rain falls as if we are paying a penalty as that during Noah’s reign. Ideal buildings are collapsing, they are crumbling down.”

“We try to paint it on paper, we try to sing it, we try to imitate it, but no way, we are loose, our hearts are loose, our souls are loose

So what is a dream and what is to hope ? In spite of all this.”

I have no answer to all this, sometimes if not all the times, I feel I don’t dream, I see no need to dream, this is what has become of us but our failure to dream is like the suns refusal to spring out today because it will eventually come out tomorrow. We are dusty dreamers

What then becomes of hopes, is there need to be hopeful despite the daily predicaments which at times seem everlasting. In  the eyes of a creative, an artist, is there need to show the world that hope is right there, dangling precariously at the edge of dawn…

In the lens of a poet, is there need to inhale the aroma hope carries with it up to the time, time defies it.

We have become dusty dreamers with sunny hopes, so What shall we name this forest..?

Kitaka Alex

I am a Creative Facilitator, Writer Poet and a Pianist, in addition to being founder and Director of the Tontoma Poetry Session which is a monthly gathering of Poets and Spoken word artists every first Thursday of the month.

This session brings Poets to share their works fused with visual art,  traditional and contemporary musical instruments.

I am currently facilitating at In Movement, Art for Social Change in Creative Writing and Poetry.

Poetry is what I feed on for survival, Short Stories are the soup and the saucepan is the paper, my hands are the spoons and forks; that is how I survive.