“Saminaka!
I have got my own
I am not a slave.”
The mantra modulated on and on
Upon the bland sight of a land
The sole repeated pattern of a sound
Upon which a poet picked his hwyl.
I am never a slave to journey
Neither is journey a slave to me
I pass through journey
And journey passes through me.
I tune my mind to the salient beckons that journeys give
Not the spree,
But the tenable creed from the scree.
I must write of how I was led through the mountains’ sides
Lodged in the taut silhouette of my thought.
I have heard the fetal cry from the recesses of a rock.
Once upon a trip:
THREE drovers
THREE herds of cattle
On THREE lowlands
The greenish lay of a marshy land
Where stagnant river beamed with the colorant of wine…
THREE egrets
Vertical to the stream
Aloes
Avocadoes
Morose Roses In A Row
Blithering Smitherings of Shattered Screens
That had stirred My Spleen
THREE barbaric banal farmers squatting by the stream
THREE white heifers basking in the meadow and in the sun…
I must write in lines sublime
Of rocks paved on rocks
Of THREE territories partitioned by THREE walls of THREE distant rocks.
I felt the pelts of ardent trecks
Subsumed in clouds of surreal lacy plumes
Of a floating sequestered enclave
Suspended by rocks
Arched by rainbow like boa from the skies
Where echoed series of oracular calls
Of a kingdom arcane.
The road faced me like a heap
Leaving my heaving mind with dismay,
“Will I ever reach the land?”
I sighed for I could not see the other side.
But what a joy to savor!
For where the road seemed to have ceased
My muse took the race.
And reaching the peak of my muse,
I reached The Promised Land.
*Saminaka is a settlement in Kaduna State
Written by: Olayiwola Olarewaju Metamofosis
Edited by: Kukogho Iruesiri Samson
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