France won the World Cup.
Our dark-goggled dictator died from eating
a poisoned red apple
though everyone knew it was the CIA.
We lived miles from the Atlantic.
We watched Dr. Dolittle, Titanic, The Mask
of Zorro. Our grandfather, purblind and waiting
for the Kingdom of God, sat on a throne in his dark
room, translating Dante.
The Galileo space probe revealed
there was an entire ocean hiding beneath a sheet
of ice in Jupiter's moon.
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve
and wanted vengeance.
Elsewhere a desert caught fire.
We got a plastic green turtle and named it Sir
Desmond Tutu.
A snake entered our house through the drain
and like any good son, I ran
and hid under the bed.
Google became a thing.
Viagra became a thing.
In July, it flooded at night and a wind nearly
tore off our roof. I thought God is so in love with us,
he wants to fill us with himself.
My mother, I saw her through a slit in the door, a glimpse
of amaranth-red scarf and swirling yellow skirt.
She thought no one was looking. She was dancing in a trance
to Fela Kuti. She laughed and clapped
at the mirror. It was the year our house
became a house of boys and girls, and a ghost, our little sister.
Calmaria. That's what the Portuguese called it. When it rained
and the world was suddenly becalmed, we would run
and peel out of the door, waving at the aurora
of birds flitting past in the sky.
We knew one of them, the little one, used to be one of us,
those spectral white egrets.
--Gbenga Adesina
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