Starved Lonely Boy Poem by Chima Ononogbu

On the edge of their greying house,
He sat, the starved lonely boy,
Humming his native songs,
Which he learned from the good old birds
That perched on West wing of a guava tree
Said to have lived two score years before his birth.

Mid-days, at waking of the summer sun,
He loitered between the woods and the meadow
For a good purpose: to glimpse at the blue sky,
And touch the air speeding across the level-headed plane,
For a snap of what lied ahead.
Away from prying eyes, he mulled his tomorrow.

A shell of himself he became, often as he looked on.
Sweats ran down his face to the silent ground,
His chatoyant eyes dilated to almost a gouge,
For along the stretch of his gaze
Littered rough boughs and sharp talons
That birthed fear spreading beyond the seeable distance.

The starved lonely boy laid enfeebled on the hot floor,
Exiled to his coven of loneliness, garbed in hunger;
But more horrified by the craggy hills that lined his tomorrow.
Yet he had his mind to lead him on,
Hoping to walk into his tomorrow with fortitude,
That he might course its plane for food.