03.09.22
First time my dad fell
& couldn’t help himself up
I blinked
World of speed
They carried him out of the yellow van
feet first
Mùsùlùmí òdodo
to be buried before sundown
I remember one night we all
in living room
Watching BBC Merlin
he’s sitting on flaking cowhide
two kids on the floor
and we steal glances at him sharp as a lance
from time to time
tense
cos he never allowed us to watch television so late
Sound sculpture
gripping armrests
his eyelashes narrowing
at the CGI dragon
a sardonic John Hurt boomed out of
He was up
so late
waiting
because mum was returning from Ondo
that night
A man looking at his kids looking at TV
& even when we stopped glancing at him
& inside Camelot
we saw him
still
with numerous eyes children place around a room
like mirrors
we saw him
with the ambient meaning of a room
A man looking at his kids
_
bloodshot eyes, smelling like somebody
you love
He would come in from the backyard
spoored with scent of time
elephant grass
old files & camphor
_
then he’s fallen
laying there
Being shrouded
laying there as if to start snoring
For he was
given to oneirological combinatorics, baami
sounding
the contours of dreamtime
Dispersion heavy
like the purring of my cat Taru
looking out the window at solid sunlight
out of skin
I envied his ease
How with shoulder shrug
he could readjust
unfurl self
Idowu esu leyin ibeji
His laughter sound
like alphabet in Yorùbá
Omo eluku mede mede
He smiled like Diane Keaton
Stringy nipple hair
the colour of a bur oak bark
Omo imale afele ja
The way he
ritually shaved his head
on the cracked stoop
every Sunday
with the same squat pail by his side
how he loved to listen
to Musiliu Haruna Ishola
When sky turned pink
& the vintage radio he would periodically unearth
“Lo gbe alafowoyi jade”
showing us how it worked
& telling us terse stories about his time
about Murtala & Ghana must go
as if to say
look
this is history—a perpetual winding
rewinding
re-wounding