Gratitude gives joy Brings joy Is joy Find your moment of gratitude today Try a change of attitude, and pray Climb unto a higher altitude. Gratitude is a thing of joy. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
gratitude
NO THANKS
Some take and never say Thank you
They deplete you and then blank you
You enrich them and they spank you
With ingratitude they seek to outflank you
Outrank you, shank you and tank you.
And you ask yourself thoughtfully
Why did I lower myself so lovingly?
Givers give so willingly
And learn so reluctantly
To stop giving everything so freely.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river
HEAVEN
To serve God, humbly and quietly
Without pomp and pageantry
Is Heaven.
Modestly and consistently,
With conviction, gratefully.
Expecting no reward,
No recognition, no award –
Because the joy of service
Is reward enough –
Is Heaven.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
DADDY DEAR
Ashes to ashes…
Dust to dust…
Spirit to spirit…
Have mercy, o Holy Ghost!
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Another anniversary of the day I beheld for the last time the noble countenance of my father. Then we closed the coffin and confered his cloak into the warm arms of Mother Earth. And set the spirt free for the Flight back Home. Always in my fondest Memories, Daddy dear… 22.5….
(Pic: my first day in Boarding School, Sep 1995 – King’s College. Lagos)
I WANT TO THANK YOU
I want to thank you
For letting me grow when I needed growth
And letting me go
When I needed space
And letting me be
When I needed the chance
To find my way back to you…
I want to thank you
For being my heart quietly beating inside
For being my mind
Mercifully sparing me the torture of unsolicited thoughts
For being my laughter
And my hope and my comfort
And my certainty that the sun will rise
And for being my home
When I lost my way.
I want to thank you
For believing in me when I lost faith in myself
For waiting for me
When I was searching for myself
In the fields of everything I am not
But think I ought to be
For planting your sadness like a quiet seed
In my heart
And reaping it with your joy
When it bore rich fruit
Because I understand.
And for many more things I want to thank you
Which I have no words to say…
Yet you understand.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
FISHERMAN
Daily my heart weeps
My soul is drenched in a river
Flowing with thoughts of you
Of late I have become
A fisherman
Richly rewarded for my toil
Bravely diving into the lake of love
Daily my heart weeps
With joy.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
A THOUSAND ETERNITIES
I see the sun rising
The horizon is no longer far
We have met each other halfway
The horizon is now the road.
The smell of your breast
Is a miracle
The touch of your breath
Is a poem
That ceases never to enchant
The undulating sands beneath which
My desert is overpowered
By your thousand flowers…
I am born anew
When you gently wake me up
In the night
Just to look into my eyes…
Heaven.
Heaven be your name
And though memoryless we wander
Far away in this blue grass under
The heavens,
Yet you pull me up where I see you
Calling me, reminding me, admonishing me
With your eyes in the middle
Of the night.
Heaven be our home
A thousand eternities from now
Far Beyond yonder horizon
We see.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THROUGH CHEQUERED FIELDS
There’s a woman I met
When the night was dark and long
And she walked, she walked along
Alongside me…
And she walked and walked with me
Through fields of chequered thoughts
And she said, she said everyday to me:
We belong together…
Together, wherever you go
Together, wherever you are
Together, however life fares
Together we walk
Where fears are hard to hide
She walks within my heart, golden torch bearer
And love forever mine.
I say it everyday to her:
Thank you, Love
But all she does, when all is grey
Is walk, she walks within my heart.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
FREED
Hardly a night goes by
Hardly a breath flows, an evening
Melts
Without this thought
You brighten my life
Curly windows
When the crowds are many
I am alone
I wanted to be a nightingale
To be a flower
I wanted to be a star
The evening wind blows
I am human. Let it be…
Sometimes again
Freed from the city’s shackles
Hackles, hard tackles
I am green, bright yellow, blue as sky
Glad am I.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
WALK YOUR OWN PATHS
Don’t follow
When the road is hollow
Which they ply –
In your heart is sky.
The answer will sound in your heart
Long after your mother and I depart
Run your immortal run
A time once upon,
You my daughter and you my son.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 