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Adebayo Adeniyi Poem
CATTLE EGRET
Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi
Silken, snow-white feathers
Slender, elegant legs
Lovely long sinuous neck
Beautiful and benignly noble head
Stout, straight, sharp beaks
The cattle egret
Seen in the dry season
In symbiosis
With cattle and the wild
Visitors to the quiet countryside
Feeding on ticks and insect
Migrating with the arrival of the rains
To distant arid land
The cattle egret
Harmless as a dove
Graceful in flight
Beautiful in sight
Her arrival, like the sweet angels
Bring the sandstorms
Dusty, dense, dry vegetation in cold weather
Interspersed with hot noons
And that sweet aroma of harmattan
Copyright © Adebayo Adeniyi | Year Posted 2023
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Adebayo Adeniyi Poem
A New Hope
Straddling waves, changing tides
Turbulent sea, bumpy ride
Still, the anchor holds
To destination progress
Wake up and smell the morning
It's the dawn of a new day
Clear blue sky, bright new morn
Sun smiling in sweet splendour
The aroma of a fresh hope
Greets the nose with lingering incense
Savour the dish
Dine and be full
Life is what we make of it
Arm yourself with knowledge and truth
Harm ignorance and falsehood
Salt and sugar look alike but
Taste different
Come with nothing
Fight for everything
Return with spoils
Like the spreading ripples
At the drop of a pebble
Life is but a riddle
Copyright © Adebayo Adeniyi | Year Posted 2023
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Adebayo Adeniyi Poem
The Audacity of Hope
Day, fresh and fearless;
Night, a distant dream;
The sadness of noon,
gone.
The sun sheds radiance on a new moon,
Crowning the hills in beauty and gold.
In blissful awe, the mountains
Welcome the rains to the green.
Like dew, promiscuous fortunes,
Swallowed by the Yew.
A newborn, birthed with hope.
Desire, dare, seek.
Resign regrets, despise doubt.
Ponder, pause, pray.
Toil in the mines of knowledge,
Where courage silently labours
into victory.
Believe,
Watch the future fall
in line.
Copyright © Adebayo Adeniyi | Year Posted 2023
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Adebayo Adeniyi Poem
New Yam
Death brings life
New, tender and green
Earth brown, immaculate white
The priest heralds her coming
The town crier drums it
The farmer dances to the market
It's time to celebrate
Let loose the masquerades
Celestial visitors from yonder
Let the melody of the odó
Echo the birth of the new yam
Like the birth of a newborn
The drums are rolled out
The market is flooded
With news of its coming
The homestead salivates
The streets jubilate
Vegetables will bleed today
The fattened cock will crow no more
The slumber of the pestle is over
For what is in the yam that the knife doesn't know
The noise of pounding
Will keep the neighbours awake
Iyán funfun báláwú is on the menu today
From: Echoes from the Savannah © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2024
Copyright © Adebayo Adeniyi | Year Posted 2024
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Adebayo Adeniyi Poem
Black is Gold
Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi
Speak
your culture
Wear
your language
Profess
your art
Own
your shadow
Love
the man in the mirror
Don't
change a thing
Black is gold
I am omolúàbí
Omo k'aaro o jire
Footnote:
Omoluabi - responsible person
Omo k'aaro o jire - Yoruba
Copyright © Adebayo Adeniyi | Year Posted 2023
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Adebayo Adeniyi Poem
High hopes built on imaginations
And human frailties
A meandering mirage on hot tarmac at noon
A recipe for hunger
In hollow voices, whisper winds of expectations among the trees
Drowned by the reality of sunrise
Gaze upon the hills with starved emotions
And welcome the verity of dawn
Expectations take a dive
When reality fails to thrive
Illusion—the gateway to delusion
Expect nothing, avoid disappointment
Spend and be spent, hope for the best
Find solace within
Peace lies only in the deep
Salad of ignorance, emotions and negativity is a recipe for grief
Nourish not the nattering nitwits
Lest you swim in a pool without water
Intertwine twins of triumph and tragedy—
A constant memento of life and death
Purge yourself of dead weights
Happiness lies within
Only extract the worries
Every success has a process
Out of the belly flows contentment—the
Opium ushering upliftment and fulfilment
Copyright © Adebayo Adeniyi | Year Posted 2023
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Adebayo Adeniyi Poem
Anaemia
Who cares for her once glorious dreams
Utopia is the new reality
Dopamine-starved citizens gaze forlornly
As blood feverishly flows out
From her gaping wounds
Siamese twins of hunger and anger
Starving her of peace and progress
In a land of high Testosterone
Security gone AWOL
Citizens on their own
Slowly but steadily
Life ebbs out
Deprived of nutrients and water
Homeland turned fiefdom by renegades
Despising folks, they make foes
Pious laughter loosens frown
of frail freedom
Blood-sapping East wind
Turns grasslands into deserts
Bruised and beaten by the day
Body and soul in dread of dawn
Conquer battlefields of the mind
With riots of laughter
This Mephistophelian theatre
With broken social ligaments and
Ruptured moral tendons
Will one day get a transfusion of a new life
Or die slowly and solemnly
of Anaemia
Copyright © Adebayo Adeniyi | Year Posted 2023
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Adebayo Adeniyi Poem
CANCER
It began as a swelling
Localized swelling
Painless at first
Then painful
Then came a period of recession
Oh!
What a sweet relief
Wellness reigns again
Then again the swelling
Only bigger now
Persistent
Bigger
And bigger
They say its cancer
And it has come to stay
No cure, they say
The cancer has metastasized
Through lymphatic vessels
To distant regions
Where it eventually
Commits apoptosis.
The conqueror
Has conquered itself
Relief for the conquered
Succour has come
Finally.
Copyright © Adebayo Adeniyi | Year Posted 2023
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Adebayo Adeniyi Poem
One Saturday in a fest
I met an old buddy in a vest
Who was mighty grateful to bond
At the side of an old pond
And tell stories of the wild west
Copyright © Adebayo Adeniyi | Year Posted 2024
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Adebayo Adeniyi Poem
Time and Chance
Time and chance
Faith and fate
Strive succeed, relax regress
The charm of beauty
And the pride of life
Are often the fortress of loneliness
And vast sadness
Time and chance
Faith and fate
The heart is the real deal
Beyond the veil is the seal
For only in you lies the verity
Time is a tyrant
Chance has no script
Time and Chance
Faith and fate
Mingling in the matrix of the mind
Face your fears, feed your faith
Soar like the Eagle, conquer space
Take the plunge, dear to float
In adversary lies victory
Copyright © Adebayo Adeniyi | Year Posted 2023
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