USAfricaPOETRY: THE RAINY SEASON
By Chris Chinwe Ulasi

Special to USAfricaonline.com

What’s on your mind,
these pelting rains,
borne of Nature’s
generous appetite,
whose wet soul
I would like to know?

“Will you drown my land
under her own teary mist?
Will August break come
sooner to our rescue?
What’s in it for you
if our harvest endures?

Torrential rain
pelts needless joy
from your leaking sky.
The sun soaks up
our misfortune, dry.
Your visitor visits again.

Everywhere, the grounds
loose in their places,
my faith lost in the seasons,
like some dying farm land.
But you sit there laughing
in wide open vistas.

The villagers accept your reason.
They baffle you when they misrelate.
You just endure up inside
those ambiguous skies
that keep making music
on our metal corrugations.

We asked why,
why you delayed your coming,
and tempting our faith,
you left nothing in your stead.
Even curling dark clouds
promise everything but rain.

Trembling we flirted with hope.
Even a fish in a dry pond
seemed to breathe
from each sun-drenched day.
For some, this image
of that very dry fish hedges,

alive with that seasonal promise;
but, for others, your uncertain
temperament affirm the adage
from which no weather
can escape blame:
the changing shape of your love.

•Ulasi, Executive Editor of USAfrica, is a professor of Communications at Texas Southern University. Copyright © 2006