GROWING UP

GROWING UP

Growing up, we had no pumps for fresh waters
As our neighbours, who live in glass houses, do.
Hemlock never poisoned us.
Over their fate and stroke of luck.
Well, all fingers are not equal.
But I loved the sweet fragrances of our well
Especially when my tower tilted the buckets
Beneath a dark, rippling earth.
It brings forth mosses, ferns, and water
Whose almond fragrances I loved
Oh! I wished I could strike at that hour
But I wasn’t ripe at the end.
“One day, you will cast a die.”
He whispered.
Then, I would glare at my reflection through
The rippling, musty water,
And watched the dangling algae afloat the pool.
The beaver bird knew I would grow someday
Tilting the oasis like my tower.

STORMS

The grumpy looking gelatinous blob fish
And long, nosed proboscis monkey
Don’t know what they have
Until they glare at the bones and skulls
Of carrion, peacocks fed by vultures
Then they will kiss the soil.
The mole rat that whizzed from a tiger’s claws
Should go on bended knees to its Breath Maker.
I saw a rodent that escaped from a lion’s jaws
In fervent sledges, tongs and prayers,
For weathering the torrential storm.
Ah! I saw a jungle facing a golden coin
The leaves thereof fallen still decaying
Adding compost of slaying.
The harvests were rotting
And the woodpecker flapped from a sycamore
To a haven of an oil bean.
An icy current flowed through my tendrils
"Does a falcon has to leave its falconer?"
At this solemn hour.
I guess it doesn’t.
I sauntered on with a bullet in my chamber.
Well, life happens to us all
It comes like cyclone, tearing trees apart
Sometimes like a twisted climber.
But a brighter day is behind its hall.
So, let’s shed our old skins like snakes
Hoping to grow new scales.

DEATH OF THE TADPOLES

All seasons I have gleamed at the bubbling dam
Right at the backyard of my school
Sometimes greenish and still with mosses
Ferns, algae and climbers.
When it’s murky and putrid this way
Mrs. Ham, our teacher would march us there
One by one, in a straight line we stamp
Tilting plastic buckets to drench the pool.
But I loved the gurgling sound of the frog spawn
Their croaking and hopping with muscular prawn
Which brought memories of village’s lakes.
Though, while the other seedlings frowned at them
I flickered smiles, collecting the slimy eggs
Toking them in my pockets to breed at my jars.
I gawked at the tadpoles all summer long
Filling my tassels with the brief screech tones.
Then, one afternoon after school
I found the tadpoles gone with the wind
Their floating bodies dwindle like the swinging weight
Of a pendulum clock.
A molten lava erupted from my cords
As I tried to mirror the cause.
Momentarily, I cudgelled I left the lids ajar
And the blistering ball of fire had burned them.
All night, the croaks of frogs filled my helm.
With memories and darkness, I gritted my jaws.

Ikhenoba, Joseph, is a passionate biochemist and writer. His essays, poems, and stories have appeared in Writer Space Africa, Humanities Commons, Poetry South, Shortstory.net, Amazon, Poetry Soup, Eleventh hour review, Academia, Kinsman Quarterly. He was long listed for Iridescence Awards and shortlisted for Natives Awards in USA.