Wading the Tide

Just After Nine Rains

24 Tribute when death’s blow struck and my integrity, like the temple at Christ’s death, crumbled. Now I begin to see a ray of hope, more than a decade since the start of your journey into eternity. Be then my guide, my mentor along the thorny way to the gold mine that when my sun shall set I may feel that gentle hand once more in mine leading me to my reward. Just After Nine Rains O gentle sister genius to have been, gentleness and love, generosity personified, flushed from this hole of woe just after nine rains. Yes this hole of woe, hence dilemma in flesh I am for I know not whether to squeeze dry my flooded eyeballs for tears - the husband of pain – since I cannot see your gentle face and listen to your friendly voice any longer, or to hold back the husband of pain from divorce with my eyeballs, and jubilate instead that you are free from this cauldron cooking of malice. Farewell terrestrial queen of peace, of love and generosity, but let not the comfort of the heavenly abode block your throat against our libation, thy eardrums to our pleas for when the storm shall rise and the bubbles from this boiling cauldron 25 Wading the Tide threaten to swallow us, wine on your lonely residence we shall pour and your name invoke that celestial help may reach us. Hence I won’t sadden your stay with my tears. Prepare therefore a room in our father’s mansion for our impending homecoming. Meanwhile, be our guide and guard and so strengthen the gates to our home from those who wish us not well. To A Queen At Dusk (For Mrs. Menyoli née Laura Ewenye Nganda) Queen of the mountain pearl of the shore gem among stones diamond between a hog’s trotters Ewenye - is it true you are no more? To stride this earth whetting men’s appetite whetting children’s admiration with your beauty with your generosity, consoling the tormented with that radiant smile, only to set just like that... What a commodity for life and death to batter with! Where were you all when the light in Nganda’s lantern was being put out? What else can survive this queen of the coast if not woe? What else can survive this familycorner -stone if not bitterness? ...