Grace
for V
after Gbenga Adesina’s Glory
grace of the night’s throat,
lilies of grace;
grace of stars
and all their dark matter;
grace of the sky’s slow race
toward morning glories;
grace of meadows, blissful
upon their humid fields;
grace of black alders and
their communion
with greens;
grace,
of young reindeers
obeying the voice of
the wild; grace of seagulls,
of water swans and
their plumage—
the quietude of their falling
off like soft prayers;
grace of graves and
their music
composed entirely of silence;
grace of little children
whose eyes are god’s
secret doors into light joy,
the permanence of death
still and cold
in the cusp of their beauty;
grace of all the little lights
of simpler fashion
saving other little lights
from dying away in the dark.
Remnants
for almajiri boys
what is left in my palms is the sky looking down / but what is left in the palms of the sky / sometimes is the sun in anguish / sometimes rain / sometimes drought / sometimes an endlessness trapped between heaven and earth / sometimes little wrens scouring the breadth of distance / sometimes distance is abandonment / sometimes we must search and search / for grace where it does not exist / sometimes hope is the encore of pain / and the encore of God’s grace, sometimes is to return prayers to our tongues unanswered / sometimes faith grows where the whip touches a boy / a finite glow in the scar that keeps returning to the memory of skin splitting / still i let prayers cloak me / the way leaves shield their trees / between braising and simmering / because there is a pain to be fed to faith / and nothing fills the belly more than the emptiness of hope / like the emptiness of a muted song filling the ears with an aching for more / like the sun filling a river with light / and light too is something to swallow / even light is what remains of the sky when darkness leaves.
Mathew Daniel
(he/him) is a poetry enthusiast, and a volunteer reviewer at Writers Space Africa. His works have appeared in WSA lit mag, Olney Magazine, Konya Shamsrumi, Poetic Africa, Peppercoast Lit, and elsewhere. He tweets @_MathewDaniel_
