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Season: 2
Morning after the first rain,
the sun servilely salaam earth
with an apple polisher’s virtuosity
and sleepy mimosas slowly, slowly unshrink,
face skywards and shed their skins of shyness
at the touch of sun rays like a slither of snakes on ecdysis.
Barnyard hen shakes off granite grip of cold cowardly,
fowling the morning breeze,
like the salting of sores in the skin
with strong fecal fragrance, cusses her still
stricken chicks, clapping them to scratching
of earth for worms washed homeless by the red rain.
Trees bury their broken branches
with limbs borrowed from antelopes,
feed their gluttonous roots with remains of rotten leaves
warm away all brokenness sucking-in sun rays
and wave and dance, unabashedly, to winds waltzing
round their bloodied barks.
Morning after the first rain
the world wears a straight face,
walks on without looking back
and denizens of the dark forest and her fiends—
figureheads, nettles in a garden of roses—forge on,
hands folded at their backs, as clouds gather again.
About the Author
Frank Eze’s work has been featured in Praxis, Gnarled Oak, Antarctica Journal, Brittle Paper, Scarlet Leaf Review and numerous journals of art. His poem ‘In the Feet of a Refugee’ was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and ‘The Porcelain Plates’ won the 2016 edition of the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize. Amaranthine and Season are his debut collections he won’t stop working on. Life is meaningless for him without poetry and music.
Beautiful