#IAMNIGERIA: The River and Her Streams

The songwriter imagined
standing amid cellists
before an auditorium of

compatriots who had come
a long way for laughs
& some afrohighlife as top-up
with the first unit of his poem that read

I know the Niger
& her shore is my go-to spot
one I feel most connected to
because this too is my country.

Her grief is a pillar of salt
& by this I mean, I sit a while
to watch and her ripples begin to look
like the veins of a massive arm
stretched out for stillborn babies
towns that go up in smoke
& an economy bedfast with ulcers.

We are her tributaries
& by this I mean, she is a heavy drinker
with a belly that forgives our ruined emotions & spawns resurrection
where no life was.

How many years has she waited
for us to someday look at her overside
and realize that we are her reflection,

that we are the Nigeria
we bend knees and meld hands
to pray into being

that in each tide, each wave
there is a forging of a new nation
and we, made of the resilience

of an African soil,
must find our role in this creation
and tend to all the places
our purpose is hurting?

How much longer need she wait
before we realize that this too
is our country?