Under the Evening Wind
The sun rolls down the hill like a ball of fire,
from where our fowls croak towards the porch;
our goats are stalking the silhouetted leaves
hanging low on the rain of rotting palm trees.
The bleating of the sheep echoes in our compound,
where nests are rustling through the wicker works;
the bluebird is whispering to the eves of the kitchen
listening to hear the smell of an evening meal.
Our daughters return from the evening stream,
their pots of water balanced on their plaited heads;
under the shadows of the evening dew,
their faces wear the grey dresses of dusk.
I sit on the porch of our old mud house,
draped in the ashes of yesterday’s labor;
grey and white hairs climb up the sky
and join the clouds to hustle down the bushes.
The evening sky trusses the early morning,
shadows departing and beginning their races;
sometimes I do not know the time of the day
but when darkness falls, it's time to go to bed.
Except for flickering red lights and points of brightness
reminding me that the sun has withdrawn its glow,
I would have run out naked into the cold night
thinking another warm day has just begun.
So is every man's evening the start of the day
and there is a shift in the constellation of the clouds;
the moon slowly shrinks for the sun to rise,
and stars hide behind the fluttering birds.
A morsel of sound whirs in my lapping ears,
even mosquitoes have no patience for the evening wind,
all I hear is the echo of the end of things,
where every sound piles up into this clear-rolling past.
When tomorrow comes, the old evening dies,
like an old flag tossed aside from the rusty mast,
slowly rolls the tanks of our dead dreams away
into the moaning skies and sobbing trees.
Grey smoke rises from the rooftops of mud houses,
piercing through the tangled thatch and droning wind;
I think of the old and the young within
preparing to pounce on their evening meal.
Burning, like the persistent itch of a cough,
rises in me to join the departing birds
and seek in the light my warming home,
to bury this hunger under the caring moon.
This sound of silence is a call to sleep,
when my breath mingles with the dying fires,
and the dark haze of the evening sky
is a glimpse of eternity to which I aspire.
Would that mean a life to surrender,
when the sea is vast, and the way endless?
now I know that the distant humming of the owl
is here to bring me to another bout of spring.
Author: Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
Photo: Stephen Arnold on Unsplash
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