Nature

NATURE OR PROPENSITY

~ Che

For people who, by nature, are partner-faithful and relationship-loyal (I’m talking Sex here), there exists in their inside a great big Why when they observe how a person who they know really loves his/her partner with all his/her heart can have a sexual interchange with a third party – one time, or for a shorter or longer period, or intermittently – and yet remain totally committed to and in love with their chosen “permanent” partner. Is it a predisposition or a weakness?

It’s like a puzzle, a mystery that defies solution.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

YOU WILL NOT SEE THE SUN YET

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

After the Still of the Night, if you are listening, you will notice that the birds have begun to twitter, the dogs have started to bark, the cocks to crow. Looking out the window, you will notice that the sky is a tinge less dark and the stars and moon, though clearly visible still, strangely are fast fading too. You will not see the sun yet, but a stranger within you will tell you that the sun is stirring somewhere over an eastern horizon, and the world is waiting with a heart full of wonder, holding its breath, and every yawn is an awakening not a retiring. A quiet energy begins to brew, like a yearning.

Opening your heart, you will perceive that the heavenly song, echoing still on within you, retreating, has faded quietly quietly away again. And, your open heart still open, you will perceive that the harsher vibrations of an embattled intellectual species, human by name, are surging out once more – through windows, doors, walls and hearts and reawakening chaotic minds, through opening unseeing eyes and resettling restless souls, bodies crashing densely out of bed, self-locked plans and plots in mind, they prepare to explode upon the planet, yes, ready and about to punish a guiltless world again with another day of desperate madness starting now just when nature and the natural world would so deeply like to smile the smile of dawn.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

BLESSED BE THEY WHO WORK IN THE FIELD

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

A smile, a wave, from where did it come?
From beyond the earth, or heaven, or where?
We feel it, we see it, reflect it here from
And spread it the earth round, here there, everywhere

Blessed be they who work in the field
Who work with their hands in the soil
Blessed be they who, yield after yield
And season on season yet toil.

The end, the start, the middle of work
Like fishers at sea, unceasing, we roll
Like all true handworkers who never ever shrink
The call and the urging perceived in the soul

Blessed be they who work in the field
Who link man and nature on earth
Blessed be they, in them doth life shield
The true future waiting for birth.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

UNCONVENTIONAL PERSPECTIVE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

Human characters incarnate
And re-incarnate.

Each stay on another Earth is but
A continuation.

It is limited by time and
Saturated by responsibility.

There is a task…

– this is the objective happening,
always to be borne in mind.

The key to fulfilment is Love,
Always to be borne in Heart.

You running and you running and you running away,
Sang Mr. Bob Marley

But you can’t run away from yourself.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije..

GRACE AND POWER

~ Che ~ 6 Comments

Everywhere I sought it
I sought in every land
To know if Nature’d wrought it
Anywhere beneath her hand
But though I searched with all my might
And though I looked forever
I’ve never seen before my sight
An ugly flower ever.

Sometimes it might seem to be
She‘s hidden and can‘t be seen
Through land or on the sea
As though she never hath been
Yet when ever a Flower blossoms
When a Flower blooms
Pure beauty is all I see in dozens
In all my heart’s rooms.

Did Heaven ever come to earth?
Did Beauty ever give birth?
Womanhood indeed is Heaven’s flower
Heaven’s beauty, Heaven’s grace and Heaven’s power.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

A BEND IN THE ROAD BETWEEN GRASMERE AND RYDAL

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Lake Grasmere

My heart won’t stop beating
The urge to remember
A certain curve of the road
That leads out of Grasmere
Towards Rydal
Where the motor road and the lake
Part the wanderer’s feet
Step upon an earthen path that shall
Unhurrying though the trees
Curve the curving lake into the little bridge
At the lake’s dove tail, brought us
To the shore at the foot of a hill
Where, turning, we face
Far across Grasmere lake
The enchanting rough and tumble
Chained Cumbrian hills…

Like a worried teacher
Anxious that the fleeting pupil
Fully absorb what he, left alone
Must one day on his own remember
Drawn out of the depths of a retentive heart
That wasn’t deaf and blind
When it wandered this path, admiring nature
With such peculiar urgency does this curve in the road
Where the road and the lake separate
And the woods begin, stand
Before my inner eye
Like an evening star long after the Sun has died…
A trigger, for when I focus
On that turn of the road, I see again
The rest of the walk
That followed it
Continues to follow me.

A familiar friend
A giving, undemanding lover
A memory already more precious
Than Silver and Gold.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
(Cumbrian Lines: Poems inspired by the Lake District)

THE SPIRIT THAT AWAKENED IN THE WOODS, HILLS AND LAKES

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

View over Lake Grasmere from the Woods

What has been the point of all that toil?
City’s prisoner, corporate spoil
A long line of sleeping, not being alive
Continuous weeping
Waiting for the day I’ll be reaping
That, after which I strive.

My heart has been leaping, trying to see the sun
Beeping, calling for the sun
Until my heart was full to the point of bursting
Full of longing
Blossoming of a full sense of belonging
Deep has been my thirsting –

This holiday, like a holy stay, in Gras- and Windermere
What have you done to me? Suddenly so clear
The poet in me again, ready to go his way
To be confronted
By all the effects of a life he’s always wanted
Work is as play.

There is no alternative to being who you should be
No wealth, comfort, security will make you happy truly
Nothing can compensate a spirit for a wasted life
A deep sense of guilt
At death, crumbling, the empty life that was built
Has not soothed the inner strife.

Boldly go your way, seek no reward, Bravery
Must be your natural part, unaffected, unwavering –
No poet ever wrote for money who served Inspiration
The path is the goal
The burning of the Spirit Flame deep within the Soul
Unpoisoned by Ovation.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
amazon cover copy cumbrian lines 2015

GOODBYE – WELCOME

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

ONCE UPON A time three ants ran across a wall. They all got crushed by the same hand and died. The hand put itself into food and fed the mouth, and the owner of hand and mouth died because the ants were rare and poisonous. Those who buried the corpse fell ill and died too because the poison was spreading. Nobody buried them. Birds of prey fed on them and later fell down dead from the sky. Goats and cows fed on the grass near the dead birds and, before they died, men drank of their milk; the goats and cows died and the disease was back in the lives of men.

People were dying left and right everyday. From where had this unknown disease come? Where was it headed? Would it move on and leave us alone or would it stay or would it take us along?

But there was a breed of people who did not die, against whom the poison held no sting, in whose land the power of the disease was broken. And all those who knew, or found, and walked the way into their land, this inner state of being, overcame the death that lives through our folly.

Goodbye.

Welcome.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

CLOSURE

~ Che ~ 5 Comments

They say a time will come
When upon this earth
Evolution will girdle its gains
Back again around its girth

Many a wondrous tree
That we cherish and deeply love
Will, year by year, with time
Evolving slow dissolve

Many a beloved animal
Continents, rivers, plateaux
Even man, the so-called crown
Yes, our body too will go

And one day, even she
Heaven’s gate and heaven’s door
The lovely lovely rose
On earth will be no more.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

THE SONG OF HEARTS

~ Che ~ 3 Comments

image by Unsplash

A woman there was
Who by music was made –
Music conceived her
And made her
And set her free

And lost she wandered
Uncomprehended and lonely and
Confused for many a day
Until upon a morning, dawn tore
Out of her heart a haunting melody
And she learned that she could sing

Then did she, joyous of heart, compose
And sing and release to the world
Like a bird-being set free
The very song that fashioned her
And daughter became mother
Nay, traveller became bridge

I am a song
You are a song
We are all heaven’s song.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.