From a fast moving motorbus
A man standing in a field is a scarecrow
An albatross landing is a lost boy's kite
Or a vulture preying on his corpse
Women hunched over cassava stalks
Are adolescent palm trees drooping to the midmorning wind
& the children picking weeds almost as delicately as fingers do lilies
Are mud figurines shattered at their feet
An uncompleted house at the bottom of a green hill
Is as you haunted by stillness & longing
Its roof red as the earth of Issele-Uku is a rusted sky that allows no rain
A ripped billboard becomes the aftermath of your hands on my cloths & skin last night
& in truth your language was native to poems whose wordings
I've long forgotten
Of which I'd rather convince myself are best unwritten
Because I'm your passenger
Rickety body
A casualty waiting to unravel
& I cannot own you even if I wanted to
Nor walk this loneliness without you
If you loved yourself the same way you've often urged me
To leave home
Curse God
Forget you
