Adeeko Ibukun
Years passed just as years do,
And I took my rescued cat,
Unbruised, right to the shade
Where we had planted a tree
And I said to it, you can make
A home of it and it did. Later
Memories like the branches
Of the tree began to float aloof
And the cat is part of it. I learnt
That it’s just by merely being that
A memory is reverent, and this,
My mother says is like us doing our
Part. Now, when I stand
Where I stood it’s in the shadow
Of a taller tree and my cat
Looks at me from
The new heights of its branches.
Adeeko Ibukun is an award-winning Nigerian poet. He received the 2nd Prize for Sentinel All-Africa Poetry Competition in 2012, and his poem, “A Room with a Drowning Book,” won the 2015 Babishai Niwe African Poetry Prize in Uganda. Ibukun was a guest at the Lagos International Poetry Festival and Ake Arts and Book Festival in 2015. His poems are widely published or forthcoming both in local and international journals, including Sentinel UK, Open: Journal of Art & Literature, Rhino, 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Expound, and Fortunate Traveler. He lives and writes in Abeokuta, Nigeria. He strongly believes every Nigerian youth has a political duty to help Nigeria find peace.
