The Miraculin Berry Poem by Dela Bobobee

There are times when the bitter tastes of life
make man seek for sugar coated remedies
myriad of life’s vicissitudes make weaklings
of men of valor for an easy way out of battle
but is bitter sweet not just a fleeting illusion?
can harsh realities be mesmerized into bliss?

these answers I have found long ago in youth
as I remember when I was a little boy growing
roaming the thick rain forests of West Africa
I crossed the Volta from Aveyime to Adidokpoe
to spend my school vacation with my relatives
the village boys taught me many strange tricks
then one day as we went on berry-picking spree
I was taught to eat lemon and unripe mangoes
with a tinny red berry called elen in Ewe tongue
this is no ordinary berry ever spouted on a shrub
it has the secret to turn sour and bitter to sweet
with childish glee I ate elen to hypnotize taste buds
and to tease hitherto bitter tastes into sweet gutfuls

alas, when we got home at eve my glee turned to cry
too late for me, I lacked the trick of reversal of magic
because every other food I ate tasted so sadly sweet
soft morsels of pounded yam and hot tasty fish soup
tasted so agonizingly unpalatable I spit out and cried
while others roared with rueful mirth and grinned at me
calmly I savored only the aroma of a sumptuous meal
the berry’s magic works only on taste buds not hunger

some lessons come too late to roost in our short span lives
to atone for erroneous notions and bad deeds that defy
solace in propitiation and abnegates our human inner self
as we see everything as one when we jump into space
to have a clearer view of things we leave behind as clues
if life is a battle we must all fight to pass through to infinity
challenges are the darts that make our arrows triumphant
with determination and vision to lessen human problems
victory is doomed when we psychedelically rewire taste buds
for we’ll loose track of the present and jeopardize the future.

Written by
Dela Bobobee©