Cryptic

My grandfather and me
Beguile under the palm tree
In front of our burnt red hut
Sprawled on a torn raffia mat

Like a couple of yogis
Heads bent, sculls kissing
He put his thumb in spitted sputum
Fourteen lines… he drew

Five in two circles
“Your future is like the proud moon
Shun those white witches
They will come for you
On the night of the morrow
Despise them with your ancestral blood
They are bearers of sorrow”

“Old one, how must I learn to speak
Like the white witch if I so despise him?”

“The black man is no fool
Obrume, you carry the heart if an eagle”

He placed four stones
One for the North
The others for the East
The west and the South
So he said….

My eyes beheld the stars
Falling from the black sky
Down to the brown earth
The dust had licked my father’s signs.


©Oluwatoyin Odewunmi