Memories Poem by bassey etuk

Memories
Drip! Drip! Drip!
Rain drops falling on my roof
Drip as they fall, memories to bring
Faces, shadows, places come fleeting by like trees stalking speeding cars on a lonely highway
The ocean and the waves as I peer through the broken austere wooden window
Fishermen with their canoes unloading to waiting buyers the hidden treasures of the ocean
The freshness and saltiness of the sea breeze envelops my senses
The piercing noise of the children clinging precariously on their mother's wrappers
The eruptive laughter engendered by a successful barter in cash or kind
Remnants of time past but present and like the fishermen coming back to shore
They bring back memories so vivid like the drip, drip, drip of the rain on my roof.

Drip! Drip! Drip
Memories come rushing like Hurricane destroying everything in its path but itself.
Places so familiar yet so distantly strange, faces stirring back as if to say hey! I know you
Is it just memories or hallucinations?
I long to walk the streets of Victoria and catch a nap by River Limbe
Cuddle and declare love everlasting at midnight by Alfred Saker monument
Teatime dance at three at the Bay Hotel on Sunday, night club at the Black and White on Friday
All night at the Miramar on Saturday and grace matinee at Church Street…
A hard time we had and a hard way we took making it
I long to take a dip in the ocean alongside the turtle, "batoke fish", "broke married", "nyanga fish"
And bask in the glow of the majestic sun as it adorns the shimmering blue waters
I long to hear the dull monotonous church bell and the burning of incense
The pious exuberance of the altar boys, and Father John's Sunday morning sermons
Invite like a soft breeze from the ocean, soothes the expectant mind


The sirens of passing ambulance jolts me back to reality
Dreams are figments of the past, an escape from reality
But reality is a figment of an undefined present drifting into the past
The past, replete with fondness when life is lived amongst the loved and lovely.