My Mother, My Joy, My Sorrow

I watch you get busy every morning,
in the shadows cast by these ugly trees,
littering our compound like corpses
standing as guards into our house.
You wake up early before the birds
begin to chirp in their nests,
or their feathers cuddle our thatch roof,
before their silent walk turns into flight.
You raise the hot pot on your head,
ready to go to the market to hustle,
and return with a basket of eggs,
a loaf and a gallon of fresh milk.
You return wearing a smile like lipstick,
your eyes flickering with the joy
of seeing us nestle on your bosom,
devouring the fruits and sweets of your hands.

In the afternoon, you hurry to the farm
with my sisters, and sometimes me,
without minding the sweltering heat
and your age that grows by the hour,
your afternoon glow turning grey;
you carry hoes, cutlasses and shovels
to till the hard ground and sow seeds.
You don’t care about the hard earth,
but you stuck the old hoe on the crust,
wipe the trickles of water from your brow
and ask us if we are hungry or thirsty.
The bottle of water by your side
returns to us and ends up in our throat
while you stand akimbo with a smile
in the middle of the farm like a heroine
who destroyed the dragons in her house.

Now, I see you grow closer to evening shadows,
cast by the wilting flowers in front of our house,
closer and closer towards the flowing stream,
and I wonder how you will reap our harvest.
Drenched in your work, you never stop
to ask time to hold the reins of its horse,
when your strength comes in sighs and pants,
like a tree climber pausing for strength
before he reaches the top of the tree.
I wonder what colour your childhood was,
and what dreams kept you up in bed,
that coerced God to send this toil and boil
growing in your soul like a dark mushroom.
It can never be otherwise, you realise
that we will donate to you our old age
as you gave us your childhood and dreams.