POETRY: THE MAN WE USED TO CLIMB

By Salim Yakubu Akko 

                Photo Credit: Nathalia Van

THE MAN WE USED TO CLIMB

when we were children

there's a man we used to climb 

with a labyrinth of thoughts

that we would touch the sky

and whenever we climb 

he would take us to another world 

with birds, with trees;

the world where antelopes 

play a chase game with bats

and another day

he would stand near our room

singing the alphabets of our names

with smiles, with delight, & in chorus

we would answer and climb again

a day, week and a month passed

waiting for the return of his soft whispers. 

but he didn't come again.

got tired and asked, “where is the man we used to climb?”

and mom said, “he has gone to where succulent plants speak”

                                                                                  

Salim Yakubu Akko is a writer and a mad love of poetry. He has been published nationally and internationally. He is the World Voices Magazine’s Nigerian correspondent and a guest contributor at Applied Worldwide. Some of his works have been published/forthcoming in Trouvaille Review, Impspired Magazine, Scratch Poetry Magazine, Fevers of the Mind Magazine, Upwrite Nigeria, My Woven Poetry and elsewhere. He is a member of Creative Club Gombe state University, Gombe Jewel Writers’ Association and Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation.