Amu Nnadi Pilgrim’s passage i green is the colour of a golf course and my life is beautiful from distances x i have seen moths break into elegies of broken wings over a flame of kindled hope falling with fallen dreams of ashes and dusts to dust songs of mouths without you my mouth is my passage mourning beginnings without you Childhood v i hear the sound the wind makes through the crack in the window of a speeding car protesting innocence lost on the highway to arrivals shrill like a deprived motherhen my childhood is trapped in departures and cracks are grim reminders of the noisome hazards of growing old vi if i were to count my years backwards there are numbers i d skip and there are many detours in the fork on the road i d rather not take memories fiercesome leap at me from the thicket of youth and i cringe among familiar numbers with tales forked out from the debris of childhood vii would i suffer the silence of guilt for sins not committed would i, pilgrim, suffer alone the parturition of atonements across the knees of hindsight hunched over roads not taken numbers skip over my bones as i kneel and, pilgrim, i arrange them in neat rows like adam’s ribs along the famished belly of valleys i, pilgrim xi inbetween two walls of pine i am lost in the woods of life the sky a dark shadow of forest greens and thin are the spears of light through the fog of nightmares inbetween two deaths the forest sheds on my face droplets of ceaseless grief and i pause transfixed listening to the hooting silence of my fears and dead are leaves about my feet i, pilgrim Spring i spring is not a stream but the source of living hope the flow of life from beginnings and innocence is a cool clear drop of moments flowing over rueful rocks among shifting sand my life flows among the sharp of rock filtered by filthy weed and eternal appear the droplets of regrets ii spring is not a season but life exploding in colours among merry petals season after season yet fragile are my flowers in all season the sweet fragrance of arrivals floats in the wispy air pulling butterflies a beautiful rose in her hair and sharp are the thorns of initiation iii spring is not a season of comfort but a sixinch bed of roses oiled to suffocate the noises of blooming in the night of thorns the beds i have made are straw weight thorns of thunder and i lie down with a groan amid suffocated dreams awaiting sixfeet iv spring is not a coil of pentup rage waiting to leap at the neck of frustrated dreams my days are spread out across flat and supine fears and stars are a glint off the metalled coil of my pathways vi life bursts like flowers of spring all around me with colours red purple yellow orange and white my spring catches me at night like a thief among dull and faded dreams blue black and grey i, pilgrim vii spring floods my days with warm blood searching out dark corners peopled with fear and in the eyes in the eyes of the questions of old age the day lightens my craggy face with exclamation marks of hope how rare how rare like the linen of habits the pilgrim sees the light of passage without the burden of words and feels the cool breeze of spring unburden at dawn the petals of a season unburden the buntings of fear at the approach of the autumn of life
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