To this summit, unwieldy path.

Oh, yes! Long and tortuous…

Though smithing to its core,

Through those many years of arduous trek,

It was a journey to refine and revive!

And like the sheen on those faces,

Thousands of sepals passed and

graced

Rejigged by your hands, ready to plow,

They shed their brilliance on the path you stride

Ahead, far into the distance.

There lay the pinnacle

In sight but

Unwieldy was the route that led to it

Long and tortuous!

But streamed with the persistent songs of canaries

Then, they came along

One, after the other

A soldier, in the like of an angel

Brandishing a torch and one word,

“Forward!”

Though unwieldy the path insists

“You shall never be alone,” he says.

For rather than leave the weak unaided

Wallowing in their burdens

You have saddled your burdens

Doubled-up to lend an ear,

To give a hand and match the legs

Give a life, if it had been fated,

For what is life if it cannot give one.

And for this

From the warm guts of life’s elements

“We have come, even if to ease your burdens

But more, to give a hand, lend an ear and

Match the legs.”

Together, we reach for the height

The pinnacle

Where the “full moon chooses to come to us”

Tingeing the blackness of our skin

And the shadows that cross with ease.

Dedicated to Adeojo Kolawole Adeyemi Hannibal, and his birthday buddies, ‘Lutanna and Seun on the occasion of their 2019th anniversary of birth.