Poetry

Derek Keats image

By

Kingsley Alumona

Rite of Passage

Coiled like a cat,

I, Mother Earth vomits

Supine on dead dust,

Bare back touching living sands.

Admission in brown.

On feeble legs,

I, earth-face crawler

On dust-taxed sands,

Scribble only what the heart can see.

Matriculation in green.

Omnibus on shoulders,

Different pages, dust and sand,

Both in one brain blooming,

Both on mortal transcript looming.

Convocation in blue.

The sage,

Protégé of the taxing dust.

On living sands my legend imprinted,

Therefrom I will my world profess.

Inauguration in red.

Stretched like a snake,

I, Mother Earth swallows.

On dead dust my life encoded

For posterity on living sands one day decode.

Valediction in black.

New Year, Same Us

Thundering fireworks and solemn resolutions

Satiate the open harmattan night.

The prodigals …

We are gathered on earth cracks,

On dry sands imprinted our pentagons.

Under our careless feet

Lie withered foliage of thirsty trees

That once had emerald smiles on their faces,

But the rain will soon blossom them into greenery.

What a small miracle it would be.

Seasons come and go,

Life manifests in different forms

That ends sometime, and then begins again.

But we measure life in time that does not move,

While we, in oblivion, move like the seasons.

We are standing on our pentagons,

Listening to fireworks, making resolves.

But the fireworks tower our resolves and blow them away.

The New Year is same as the old one

With finality that knows no end.

Kingsley Alumona

Kingsley Alumona hails from Delta State. He read Geology at the University of Nigeria and is currently doing a master’s degree in Applied Geophysics at the University of Ibadan. His works have appeared in Kalahari Review, Daily Trust, The Tribune and The Sun newspapers.