Yelu

Poetry Adewuyi Ayodeji

Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

You spread like the horizon - limitless. Not once could I imagine your end Yelu, I ran to you as a mother figure in hunger, in loneliness, in frustration I knew you listened to my unvoiced words and put my love in the hearts of elderly women, the ones we dreaded

- they were all witches to us They brought their okra to dry on your neat top and you rendezvoused both women and children. My grandma schemed my initiation into your warm cult. A first-timer would doubt my infirm legs could climb up even with a

basketful of okra on my head. It must be a magic I had a portion on the legendary Mount Yelu. Yelu was my leg and my sight from you, Shao was an entity I strolled in a second. I was there when the campaign train of MKO Abiola hit Oju-Oja.

There,

I never missed a scene of Awon festivities. As I now return, my mind is bruised. Where did this dirt on Yelu come from? Do mothers like Gogo still maintain portions on this adoring Yelu.

Doubts…

I fear the fate of Awon here: like a liquidating company, this festival of season and of reason clips its survival wing. Visitors from far and near would troop in sightseeing the town on Mounts Yelu and Sinniga, honouring a festival of mass wedding: hundreds of brides and grooms wedded on a day of traditional rite at the market square.

Yelu was my course – there I treaded and trained there I beheld the rustic beauty of the town there I sighted the window to the world there I saw birds fly and sing then I learnt their way

Came this era of alien mentalities and Awon would be receding from my view: gidi-gidi bom-bom from Ogidiri to Isale-Oja The ekun iyawo and eka iyawo the oko-ewu scene all lyrical flavours and magical displays crabbed.

What’s this fate of Awon on Yelu? Each time I visit, my shortsightedness returns. Where Yelu could take me my fragile legs cannot. Have I sighted your end and the end of Awon and the end of rustic life I thought was barbaric?

Now your worth beams at my youthful ignorance. Wash away these butts these drugs these sachets and these bottles that inebriate and freeze the mind of the youth. Take them back to your glory. Yelu this stinking wind doesn't compare to the old waft I reminisce.