Visiting Waters
Because the years could not be left behind,
the boy is at the water and could not say he knows
the depth he has never waded through. He could
not say this is the science of the river, map its
course through its history of ups and downs, tell
the brackish tears from the fresh water breath,
where it eased down a slope like the ebbing
evening grace, where it bobbed over a puddle and
left behind a mind. The angst of a place being
a gush – in a lexicon, the war – chiseling off stones
from the glen’s walls, leaving behind cups of sorrows.
Then compass could not be of location and distance
but stories, what could not be undone like the barge
of pain one already own. Son, what brought you here
is not canoe, the father said. The cargoes of stories
steered through the contours of maps to give the world
its shape. Through the evening light, he would read
the courses on his father’s face, how they resemble
many journeys, the courses of light burning through
the nights, a world and its walls of folds, the water
hobbling on like all that slipped from him when he held
him close, the weight he could no longer feel in his hands
after the grip, what the women lived to reach, bringing
their best in their night’s saffron, their silence being
their best company, their eyes being the lamps
he tried to see the water with; when he stepped into
the brook, the ripples ringed moons at his prodding feet.
IBUKUN ADEEKO
Photo – Antwuan Malone
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Discussion1 Comment
The poem is deeper than the ocean. Too deep