Contemporary Ode To A Mother Crying Out

 

              

 

                  Contemporary Ode To A Mother Crying Out

               To Her Children…

 

In the presence of all to see, her world turns

and runs red with the blood of her children:

Blood flowing like a wandering stream.

 

The bloated bellies of surviving youth

mock aborted pregnancies of liberty;

and her once luscious breasts now sag

in union with the sinking faces of lost hope.

 

Lost hope---disappearing like solitary

ghost smoke of abandoned fires;

abandoned fires---dying in waning time.

 

Hollowed red eyes of fleeing lovers look backward

onto the wholeness of nothing---smiling death

sitting and waiting on the coming feast.

 

Though the heartbeat of hope struggles

through the valleys of shadows of death, she

must yet believed that God has not forgotten her;

 

Indeed, it’s  yet believed that in the midst of the ethnic genocide

in her Dante-like hell, this wretched mother---clinging to time

and its history---will once again experience the restoration

of her Pan-African unity and great African glory.

 

A great glory of continental liberation

sown in the brave hearts and liberated minds

of her children who---scattered throughout her lands

as well as in Diaspora---will eventually bring to fruition.

 

Remember, wherever you are, Mother Africa is;

and you’re indeed, her liberating children---

Umbilical bound to restore her collective glory.