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Poetry
Kólá Túbòsún
This Step, This Spot
And this is life, even as tomorrow crawls in
with bright winks
or grim wings across an uncertain sky. Yes, this
is the life
for which fore-runners spoke, a day for which
mothers' backs
broke with sweat, and strain in odd old colds of
irksome strife...
It is now that beats the heart, with two eyes
across a dawning day,
and a flesh hung in space, with rasping sound of
black restless keys.
Here it is where hope resides, not afar in the
boxed, fuddled past
of rain on concrete cracks. It is not in the
exile of many journeys.
This plinth of time must serve as a totem rank
of lighted pathways
When the moon falls behind the yellow hills,
with a dry Western snore.
This step is new, but again like of several
aeons and several memories
Is old in the breadth of its pace, much more
than just a random chore.
I could ponder hope in blunt alien lands but I
will not look behind
But inwards. In its charged spot are the loose
ends of moving thoughts,
with each breath a treasury of lore, new paths
bearing known marks:
I shall live in a ball of charms which dreams
and hopes have wrought.
Like Chalk in the River
{For Susanne, Olorisha!}
They said it rained when Susanne was buried.
It poured.
They spoke of a rumble of the heavens
as the orisa osun swam back, again, to her
pristine source.
They talked of art.
They spoke of beauty.
They mentioned hands
That sculpted spirits.
But now when the forests have stopped dancing
with the rain,
See the wind escape from that storied grove.
Look, amid the hallowed haze,
at a turning twirl of her spirit gaze.
Gone is the eye that looked out for the standing
stems
When greed called for arms, and men scorned
sense, and all she wove.
Today, the Spirit it was that left, again,
To return. To return: a time-bound god, or else
a traveling dove.
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