Little Fingers

Little fingers break no bone

Little fingers break only shell of snails

How your touch lighted up

A dead nerve brighten up

You throw a wave across the sky

To meet up sometime

How time says it all

How beautiful it renders them

How did you come this way?

All again? 

I never thought.

Onward On

Their feet march on

         their bodies remain not

                         their soul will live on.

Oh Terrible Thou Art

Oh terrible thou art

To pass me by

Thou calabash of old age.

I fear thy terrible waters

Sour on the tongue

And gripping my teeth.

I fear thee terribly

Twisted bones at the hips

Growth of contours at the neck.

Descendants of men will pass by thy feet

To lie on them as thou will.

Thy anger is terrible when they provoke thee at their youth

Unbreakable hard as steel

Cooled from the molten furnace when invoked by thee.

11/9/2014

Sons and daughters of the sun

We are sons and daughters of the sun

Are you the sand on which it falls?

Hot and heavy to make you.

This place is our home

You call it Africa, Ghana.

We dance in the music of the rain

In tenderness our souls are nourished.

On the elephants we ride in glory

With the lions and tigers.

We call it beauty

When they grow green

Adorned by their flowers.

We call it peace

When they fall from their heights

And our mother shines through them.

O Africa, Africa, where art thou?

Virgins and wild of the undying mother

Your sons will flourish like the stars in the dark night

And your daughters like the sands at the beach at day.

Forever bowing to your glorious call, o mother.

Forever proud to be from you.

I guess they call it love

Is it the look on the face

And the smile that receives it

Is it that tap on the shoulders

That warms up the fingers.

I guess they call it love

But is it like a soothing through the whole being

A presence that is longed

That satisfies an unknown thirst

An inexplicable hunger.

Oh she is here…,

He is there…          

Can I tell her?

Should I tell him? 

13/2/2014

Pity be the prey...

On the green hill

Hanged lose their dropping wings

Not for a sip but a pick.

Could it not be a worm like a twig

Whose cover was not so swift

Just after its loose: a sudden fall in flight?

Pity be that prey

When the sky and its host

Moisten up their path to trap

In a sticky juicy gel.

 13/6/13

A search for rescue

A search for rescue   

Sharp was her cry

That passed into the dim distance

Above the red earth, the dry thatch

Back and forth, side to side

As if being tossed by the wind

… disappeared from sight

Came again two voices

Two bodies in definite direction

Passed me by in flight together

14/6/13