-Nket Godwin

Your face has not touched my eyes,

nor have my hands rubbed against yours.

Yet you’ve torched my dreams in many places.

Your poems, before the road of my becoming, are

fireflies guiding my art against wayside stones.

I have not seen your mouth, nor sat where you ate,

Yet you’ve fed me full with crumbs of ancient root.

I, tethered to the rhythm of your forest

as leaves fall from them,

Trail your footprint through the creeks of delta

Like a fisherman whose life is the pulsation of the sea.

This poem, a chunk, a blade of reed

In the mangrove bed of your vastness, is

An ngbút on the clam-bed of your names.

The gem you planted, your face walking the moon,

pierces nimbus of extinction, with bayonet of light.

Ebinyo, your humility frightens me.

If I offer you eternity, you may turn your eyes.

If I offer you godhood, you may show me mortality.

So I offer you Isile to pillow your sleep with song

Long enough to measure the night of your rest.