Water by Niyi Osundare

When it talks
The rain listens
The Cloud Claps
The river reels
And Rolls with laughter
The Lake never knows
What to do with its excess of grace
The streamside is a choir
Of waving ferns

Water has its own language:

When swollen into flood
Its fury is brown
(And crimson-deep in parts)
It races through the streets
On legs for ever unseen
Grabs everything in sight
With hands beyond the eye
It befriends the sky
Purloins its thunder

Water has its own language:

And teeth filed with salt
And ears waxed with words
And tongue forked with tales
Its tale is
Long as the Nile
Massive as the Mississippi
Parting continents
Coupling countries
A thousand I-lands

Water has its own language:

In the we-seas
Of the season
Of the sun
Of the wind’s sweeping war-rant
The rolling boulder
From upland quarry
And the slow, slow
Dance in the region
Below the mountain

Water has its own language:

Its Robin Hood tenacity
Its shifting fortunes
Its partial largesse
Between waste and want
Plenty and penury
And the Thirsty threat
Of Looming sands
Fishes learn, often too late
The mortal ambiguity of water

Taken from: Water Testaments: Anthology of poems on water and water-related issues. Edited by Greg Mbajiorgu.

Photo: A fisherman reaches for his boat’s anchor.