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Once the largest plant in the orchard
Sprouting slowly in glowing growth
Timely trimmings by Mama Ezinne
Kept the hedges within approved height
Oh! If I had attempted a trade
It would have fetched a fortune
Worth a whooping kekefia – my Izon specialty
The bitter leaf tree
Bearing medicinal juice in stalk
Acrid antidote for sugary sickness
Healing for malaria bouts
Changing leaves in due season
Sweetening soups weekly
Nearest neighbor, patient pumpkin, redundant
A lifetime it’d have lived
But for the ravaging floods of 2012
Chlorophyll gone; now browning
A thousand squeezes is futile futility
Juice dissolved in the deluge
The once vivacious plant
Is now an ornamental tree!
Written by: Ebidenyefa Nikade
Edited by: Kukogho Iruesiri Samson
