A year has passed
I hear the gasping of another young harmattan
Hanging in the air.
A growing quietness
Encompassing every pain
No rain.
Distance becomes a memory
The past becomes a story
To be told and relished
Retold embellished
With detachment.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A leaf…
Trembling in
The wind –
I
Through life move
With half-open eyes
That fail to see the other
Side…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
ONCE UPON a time, there was a bird.
It flew and flew for a long time, over great distances, over lakes, mountains and forests, over deserts, countries and valleys, over vast oceans and across mighty fields of thought.
One day, as it was flying over such a field of thought, it looked down and saw a little girl playing in the red-brown soil of Owerri, a small town in south-eastern Nigeria. Dressed in a short, tie-dyed west African boubou and skipping merrily on bare feet behind her father’s house, the little girl threw thoughts up into the air, bright blue and yellow thoughts, the way other children throw up ribbons and balls. And when the thoughts went into the air, they would take wing and fly high into the sky, so high up that not even the bird could see the height into which they soared.
One by one they would then, after a long while, reappear in the visible firmament as they began their downward flight to the girl. Upon their descent the thoughts were bigger, brighter, more beautiful, and they all bore a crown on their heads. This the bird could see.
By the time the thoughts returned to the girl, her father’s house had washed away and she had grown into a woman, a young and beautiful woman with a silent sorrow on her face, a deep question in her eyes, a lovely, innocent yet knowing smile upon her lips. For in the period in which her thoughts had flown to heaven, many men and women had loved and left her. Some had loved her too little and some had loved her too much. But none had loved her enough. Now she stood there with the universal question in her heart; the search for her destiny.
A song. Beautiful was the song that came out of the bird, descended along with the woman’s returning thoughts. One by one, her thoughts alighted on her breast, folded their wings around her like in an embrace and dissolved into her. As each thought disappeaed back into her, her eyes became brighter, the sadness upon her ebony features faded away, little by little, the question gradually disappeared, and she gradually grew up… until the last thought had reunited itself with her, and she stood there, tall, pretty, mature, clear.
Then did she hear the song… the song of the bird… it pierced her heart like a bird’s beak penetrating into the heart of a wild honey flower and told her wild and gentle stories of things forgotten and remembered. Like the sunflower her heart exploded open and she looked up…
And she saw the sun!
And while she revelled in the sight of the sun, for since attaining adulthood she had not noticed the sun anymore, the bird flapped it’s wings again and flew on, flew away. By the time the woman, filled with the sun, looked around in the sky for the source of the lovely song that made her look up in the first place and awakened her to the sun…, the bird was long gone.
Once upon a time, there was a bird… on and on it flew, over fields of thought and gentle growth. Simple is her song:
Remember the sun, look up –
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
From my book of inspirational short stories and anecdotes:
THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING MORE
If you are poor
Gracefully
Wear your poverty
If you are rich
Gracefully
Bear your prosperity
If you have nothing
But this small thing
– Grace –
You will never lose face.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
There is someone, higher up
Who births and breathes into the ethers
One new poem everyday
In one of the poems he gave away
He expressed the wish, the urge
That far far far away
On the distant earth another poet
Would also start to do the same
And his wish came true
It may sound strange to you
But sometimes you simply are
Another person’s replica
Just by being yourself.
Life extends its boundaries
By replicating its core.
No matter what you think, no matter
What you know, of one thing be sure
There is always something more.
And when you think you created something
The blueprint was created by another
Whose path you’ll never cross
But his work lives in you, and a thousand
Years from now, another will happen upon
This thought you are thinking now
And he will think it is his original idea
And will bring it to what he thinks is
Fruition, and yet is just another seed.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 