Walking Home By Noon Poem by Ray Anyasi

I had this dream.
Again.
I had this dream for the third time this week.
I had this dream for the fourth week this summer.
I had this dream for the fifth summer this decade.
I had this vision.
I went back home.
I went back to my father's land and my mother's home.
I went to the village that yearns for my footsteps.
The land that hugs the wheezing bones of my father.
And nostalgic for his father's memory.

I went there, where I have become a maundering stranger.
The stags and their sisters don't remember me.
But the ringed trees know my name.
They recall my hands tilled the earth beneath them.
They saw how my tender palms dug a young python from the loams of a cassava farm.
The trees, they remember everything.
They record it within their rings.
They can recall seeing me soaking in the July rains for fresh corn harvests.
They saw me beat the caked harmattan earth for a Christmas meal.
Even when I can't remember, they do.

I went there.
The land I hope to show my daughter and her siblings.
Earth, the hue of blood.
Skies, the tone of sorrows.
And air, the blend of hope.
It may not glitter, but it is priceless.
This land is the repaertoire of our ancestral history.
It's a token of our bound identity.
She's the threshing floor of our pains.
Or the cradle of our gains.
The impregnator of all our hopes.
Or the womb of our failures.
Under her skies, we leant to dream.
We force our souls to keep vigil while our bodies die to be woken again by the pain of the minds at cockcrow.
Under her eyes, we realize our nakedness.
A shameless nakedness.
Clothed again by the warmth of her gaze.

She's a dainty little village.
A place you have to miss to love it.
Like a tender damsel you jilted in your youth.
Then regret it when you're frail and old.
You wish you had loved her more when she sat by your feet.
When she opened up her bossom for you to cultivate.
When the fruits of her bowels sustained you.
You harvested her innocence for your pleasure and pride.
But you lust for the big city.
And when you have had your full of her.
When she had torn half your life from your loins, you wish to have the ever dainty damsel back.
Now, you don't deserve her.
But alas, you shall have her again.
And again, you shall jilt her.

I went there.
The only Issele home of the angered deity.
The goddess that lives in the marshes.
In the glean of crescent moonlight,
while pathetic mortals give in to slumber.
She comes out to dance in Abu-ano.
She leaves white nzu footprints to the awe of awry priestesses.
She's a deity with curious antecedents.
Mother of sinful men.
Protector of vulnerable girls.
Bruised and battered in the war of gods,
but never lost a fight against evil.
Worshipped by the dubious.
and ignored by the loathsome.
Loathed by the ignorant.
Mocked by the arrogant.
And unknown to the wise.
In the aura of her reach, old and dying men remain boys.
While suckling girls are sought-after sages.

As the sun was rising, I got on my way.
I went there.
I entered the throat of the village when the sun was angling to strike directly over me.
And by noon, I was standing before the crumbling family home.
Under whose decaying roof I wrote my first poem.
The walls that taught me to be a protector.
The floors that taught me to fear no fall.
Windows that taught me to see beyond her belly.
Doors that taught me to walk away from her.
And from whence I found this love.