POEMS by Rev Peter Addo

REKINDLED MEMORIES OF HOME

Maybe it?s about not wanting to let go.
These floods of memories
About places and times and such.
And without a delete bottom
They are for ever being rekindled.
Perhaps these tortured memories are an assurance
Of those places and people and times and such
Had indeed existed and not misleading.
These rekindled memories.
But there is no comfort in them
Without the smiles that touch my soul
To welcome me home.

THIS PLACE CALLED HOME

Sometimes my memory corrodes my mind
But there are parts I know it cannot change.
Sometimes I may deny past the hour of dawn
And like a migrating beast they fly away.
Why is it so difficult to forget?
Perhaps these are just partial images passing through.
Where I once lived someone lives there now
But I have to be strong to fight these images
To keep fragments of my childhood place.
So soon so little will be left
And I shall be alone.
But shall I ever find myself alone
Wondering if it had ever been
This place, this life
The memory makes it difficult to forget.
But like a pail of salt water left in the sun
It evaporates and melts away
Only to leave a white powder
That tastes foul to the tongue.
This place, this life, Kukuhill

THE EXPATRIATE

African by birth
Urbane, yet casual
Royalty by blood
Literate, yet colloquial
One can attribute it to all sorts of things
A scholar by avocation;
Yet believer in the tradition of the elders
An alien in a strange land
It never sounds glorious to me
Of diverse intellectual passion,
Each word becomes past
Such is the polluted air of life:
It surrounds and engulfs
Stumbling and incoherent even to myself
Two people encased in one soul
An alien; squeezing essential meaning
Each day into a divided life.
Sophisticated; yet nonchalant
From Moscow to London, and from Washington to Bonn
Now he is free, but is he really?
One half never equals the other
Forever an alien in a strange land.

FOR KWAME NKRUMAH

He rallied round the youth,
Our freedom to demand
This land he thought in truth,
Should be in our command.
So set him forth for freedom,
Through trials and persecutions
To make an African kingdom,
He had no limitations.
His mind he told us plain
Ourselves to govern with danger,
The right to live as men,
In our dear native land.
Penniless, he entered journalism,
And made us join the band.
To batter imperialism,
No sword, but just the pen.
And on he went,
His days he spent,
In and out of jails.
He advocated,
And still advocated,
Until his voice was heard.
Thus ended the match he led,
And now our land is free,
And ever free?
The struggle goes on and on.

Reflecting On Simpler Times

I don?t know who will read these words

To search them hard for meaning

As I struggle to make you feel with me

The Simpler Childhood days.

Mango trees and Coconut fronds

Waving their little bellies in the tropical breeze.

The gentle rain that touched my tongue

To engrave a cacophony of voices.

And the smell of the sea, salty and fresh

Where it touches the sky.

But now I have become alienated ,

Just like the yellow canary bird

That responds and follows the song of another

And flies right into a trap ,

And will forever regret

Following the song of the mate.

Now I understand how that yellow bird must have felt

After loosing its cherished freedom ,

To sing again and again

To lure the next unsuspecting bird .