THREE POEMS

By John Chinaka Onyeche

        

       

The Sunflower in My Father's Garden as a Metaphor For the Return of Our Ancestors. 

A Sunflower had sprouted out in my father's garden in the morning, I showed it to him in the evening while we had walked through the garden. And my father told me that, it was a way of our ancestors returning, those who had died in the years past without a trace of them with humans. They return as flowers from their long time journey into the spirit land that we should now care for them. And when I showed it to my mother, she said that "it is a gift from nature" and admonished that I should care for the little sunflower in our garden. But when I came back to look at it again to know where it was coming from, I was bemused how it faded away from the spot where it stood like the Sun in the firmament. Then when I returned home from the garden, the news was broken to me that my father had walked away from home to where no trace of him is possible and that my mother had wailed rivers as tears and that she had paddled through it as her wooden canoe into the world of oblivion and each day of my remembrance them, I walk through the garden searching for a sunflower, maybe my father might have returned through it or my mother will become like nature in the garden and my father as the sunflower and now as my ancestor.

                                                                                  

                   Photo Credit:  Unsplash

My Father and the Last Train

When the last caravan left the terminal last night, it echoed miseries as I was awoken from my many slumbers of that which I had once called family life. And in this poem, my father was a hunter and he hunted down good games. And my mother, a farmer who gave birth to a Daughter who mends fabrics and never tried to mend anyone's, broken heart. A Son who writes poetry and plants trees from where he writes on dead trees. And a nephew, one who kneels before the Sacrament, an image of a man with a cross and recites the prayer beads around his neck every morning whispering; amen and amen as a ritual for the family. No doubt, this was the setting of our home in the middle of the train station where every travelling traveller travels through; dead or alive the station, the hands that bear the legs on which the gruelling wheels kneels to say their last prayers on never-ending, going to bed as it cries all night and day alike. For last night, my father's hands had hovered around the last train at the station which was heading to the new wood-world where only the dead trees live to retell(s) of life's last memories in this world. I mean, where only in the body of dead woods are memories written by a poet and his Son one amongst them who writes poetry on dead trees of times and memories of men on this world writes about his father and the last train heading to the new wood-world of no returns. 

                                                                                  

                  Photo Credit:  iStock

7 Pebbles At The River Bank

I have learned to mourn my dead(s)

with three pebbles pick up at the shore 

& another four to be thrown out as a rite 

in each of the morning that I had woken  

from my bed of piled-up memories of old.

I run through the memory lanes down 

to the river from where we had once run 

through its way and submerged our bodies 

into its coolness as a way to renew our souls. 

But now, the river has run dried & stall 

& as at its banks, I stood like an oak tree

leaf dripping waters to wet the river again 

with my thousand tears as I mourn them - my dead(s)

emptiness echoes within me as I wailed 

for our long visit to the river & here 

its waters knew that I had come to mourn 

my dead ones here who had evaporated 

at the wake of the Sunset.

To each of these four pebbles that I had picked, 

I threw each of the pebbles to the four corners 

of the world: east, west, north & south, 

for who knows which way to which way that 

all my dead ones went through at their death, 

this is how I had learned to mourn my dead ones. 

                                                                                  

John Chinaka Onyeche "Rememberajc" (he/his) is the author of; (Echoes Across The Atlantic), a husband, father and poet from Nigeria. He writes from the city of Port Harcourt Rivers State, Nigeria. He is currently a student of History and Diplomatic Studies at Ignatius Ajuru University Of Education Port Harcourt Rivers State.

John Chinaka can be reached through the following means:

Rememberajc.wordpress.com

Facebook.com/jehovahisgood 

Twitter.com/apostlejohnchin

Apostlejohnchinaka@gmail.com

https://linktr.ee/Rememberajc