Overhead
In the clear blue sky
A fervid unrelenting sun glares
Casting stunted shadows
Beneath and around a little round shelter
The day’s coming of age to proclaim
Inside the dainty circular shelter
Eyes fixed on the monstrance
Rosary beads in slow regular motions between fingers
The one sits motionless
Arms raised, the other kneels
In a silent mismatched unison
To the mountain mover
The duo offers the mountainous trammels
And the blazing fetters
Glimmers of hope
Extinguished
And reignited
Only to be doused
Dying dreams rekindled
Then smothered
Again…
And again…
And again
In the meeting between
Callousness and ingenuousness
Rendering living lifeless
Perpetual death!
In his esurient quest to entrap the passerine
The hunter forsook his foremost skill
The understanding of the hunted
Forgot that a clueless pursuit
Is akin to an endeavor at felling a tree
Using a blunt axe
Howdy winter
Why do you hide the sun
You rush her out with a frown and darkness you beckon with open arms
Eleven in the morn resembles three on the leeward side of noon
Into the witching hour seventeen hours you transform
Over the Michigan down you pull the dark nimbers
The lake touches the sky a stone’s throw away
Of their green and yellow and red and purple and orange, the trees you rob
Naked to the bone they stand
Their barrenness proclaiming defenselessness and desperation
Lace not an olive branch
With venom and poison
Lace it not
With the spit of words
Unkind and haughty
Lace it not
With foul breath
Ferrying untruths and hubris
Lace it not with the sound
Of ignorance and conceit
It is an olive branch
The vastness of the trove bewilders
The enormity of the sea confuses
The multiplicity of tasks
Breathing, and cleaning, and refining, and swimming
The oodles disorient
Where did they go
The days of lonesome bliss
When solitude was a priced jewel
Sought after with the yen of a thirsty deer
Looked forward to with the eagerness of a hound
When focus on goals
Impelled self-isolation
When the paradise of empty spaces
The serenity of loneliness
And the company of the self
Were akin to a masseuse’s therapy
To a body sore and sapped
Where are the days of meaning
A swallowing
A disappearance
Like of some prey into the insides of the predator
Or of a needle into a bale of hay
It’s the image my mind conjured
The persistent one that still materializes
Whenever I picture a journey into the city
The governor seems to harbor dictatorial attitudes to say the least. The vexatious nature of this possibility notwithstanding, it is less likely that her despotism may sink her and more probable that her unwise execution of it will. If a cow wishes to drink from a crocodile-infested river, it has no option but to be sneaky about quenching its thirst. The governor must surely know that while her predecessor’s self-christening as a crocodile was a strategy to scare the faint-hearted and allude to his supposed mettle, the political waters in which she now swims are ever teeming with the menacing reptiles. With Munya’s announcement that he’s going back to county politics and Kawira’s fallout with county legislators, the county boss’ goose might just be cooked. Perhaps it is not too late for her to revise her approach and try to repair the burned bridges though. Unlike her predecessor’s dethronement, hers will neither be shocking nor unexpected if she does not act quickly and astutely.
We know the West has tried to regain its foothold in the country after realizing it “lost” us to the East. Could Ruto’s reconsiderations about GMOs have been occasioned by the pressure from Uncle Sam? If that is what the president is giving in to, he must be told he is on the wrong track. He risks driving us into a ditch. If the move is not informed by his own advice of back when he was the Minister for Agriculture, Ruto needs to be cautioned. If he does not retrace his steps, it is this scientific matter that will be the undoing of this scientist president. Hot on the heels of economic issues’ undoing of an economist president, this will be disastrous for Kenya.
The Caged Bird Sings 