Victorious End Poem by Chima Ononogbu

In the land, a lone tree,
Bones withered and cranky,
Leaves dry, and fallen
Prey to the paws of the earth.

At the sea, too,
A log of bloodless wood
Swung back and forth by garrulous sea waves
In a playful descent to drowning damnation.

Still, a vessel
A broken vessel,
An overloaded miniature ship,
On the brink of a long dive

Into the belly of sea rage
And be pulverized by its intestines.
Then, a teenager in a transpiration of events dreadful
While swallowed up in the backwoods of spirits.

Yet, emptily I gazed into the black landscape,
Nothing much to behold, but speechless shadows
That stared back at me with mild inquisitiveness.
There, I stood in the dark, firm and resolute.

Suddenly a flame, at first,
A tiny flame, like a droplet of fire
which, in a twinkling, grew into an expansion
Of a giant warm fluorescence,

Like an explosion of a gentle light,
Spreading gradually over the landscape,
Shaking the dark to its marrow, off
It flew into the wind like disembodied air.

Then, a clear air, scented of freshness,
Whooshed across the landscape, my bed,
Where I woke up, staring at the ceiling,
Wondering what the dream was all about, though victorious.