“Song” by Pèlúmi Sàlàkọ́

On the radio, they play a hymn in honor 
of the ancestors. Drum, the soul of music, 
heralds the procession. The timbre of Piano 
spirits in, washing us morose. 
I watch my father, hunched in his cane chair, 
water rinding the base of his small eyes, 
listen with solemn devotion as he gazes 
out of the window. perhaps, 
attempting to reconstruct a youth 
lost in the diasporic horizon. A bird 
perches near the sill of his window 
and this reminds me that the dead 
and the lost ride in the same boat. 

Pèlúmi Sàlàkọ́ writes from North Central, Nigeria where he presently studies for a Bachelor of Arts in History and International Studies. His writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Brittlepaper, Pulse, Jacarpress, Pallette Poetry, Agbowó, Down River Road, Memento: An anthology of contemporary Nigerian Poetry, elsewhere. He is the Third-place winner of the Bloomsday Writing Award organized by the Irish embassy in honor of James Joyce. He tweets  @Salakobabaa