I've Poetry in my Throat

by Oppong Clifford Benjamin.

I drank a calabash of dreams
with the aroma of sand
that mingled freely with the air
when the first drops of rain fell
from a bleeding sky to thirsty earth.

Seated at the windows I was.
Of the view was humid silence
of homeless birds who moaned
the ruin of their nests on a tree
and the wind they cursed to grave.

Temporary everything in time;
earth was gone with its perfume
in the ghostly wind that ripped
nature of its mystical content-
the nest and my dreams.

I imagined tomorrow today
from yesterday’s labour
and tears eroded my cheeks
as I measured my future
in the recent funeral on the tree.

I've a poem in my throat

which tastes like a life coiled
around cloudy fears
and I want to do nothing

than swallow the ruins of rains
and re-frame my pains into gains
but I see the drains of reigns in plains.

Have I also not built my nest
on a praying palm tree?

Is a rhetorical question for God.

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