Three Poems

by Tukur Ridwan

memorabilia: my rural days as a youth corper

that there is a place like Arimogija[1] on earth’s scalp is no news under the sun. but I tell you, life here is stuck onto its roots like a tuber without the stems and branches of civilisation. the fertile land and dense forests bestow fruition with food and fruits. here, coals and firewood make our kitchens—to farm is to fulfil each day, and hunting blurs the poverty line among households. here, souls and spirits borrow the same skin, so how do you tell who is who, and still live to tell who was who? fact and fables share the same roof, as obstinate hands dare poke into nature’s dark holes. devoid of electricity and close to anarchy, no chiefs or kings to shed light on this landscape at night. banished from the 21st century’s order since the 20th, yet caught in the matrix of survival and subsistence. upon visit, you would call this place a village, but for us, whose stems are rooted already, we relish nature’s benevolence. I now have a home here, for the arms that welcome me with harvests of cocoa, plantain, maize and melons. here, everywhere feels like home—I dine in the fresh flood with my drums and pails upon rain, and spread my wet cotton capes for sunshine to dry. here, a picture takes me down memory lane. circa 2017.

[1]. A hinterland in the town of Ifon, Ondo State, Nigeria.

Recycling

I count the sands spilled on my bed when I wake up,

Then wonder how many lives I’ve shed off my skin.

I guess I’m simply losing myself to Earth’s entitlement,

Or rejuvenating my soul like a tree making peace with fall.

The sky feels the same when the stars wane, deserting

The moon to nurse her solitude in an elegy of darkness.

Out my dusty window, the trees shed their past and undoing

For a new beginning. The rust of a snake’s scale decomposes

On the Earth's crust. A phoenix’s ashes come together

To form and become. My mother once told me of her belief

In new beginnings, citing names like Babatunde, meaning

Father returns when a patriarch dies, much as Yetunde[1]

For a deceased matriarch. We borrow the spirits’ language

And brand it reincarnation, since the family runs on genes

And the relic of names. I say that the DNA is just God's way

Of recycling us while staying anonymous. As nature’s

Offspring, we all have a way of sustaining, even when

Death’s scoop of blood leaves behind drops of bodies

For drops of tears to tend to. I learnt to lose my grief

To the hands of hope when a loved one transitions.

Now, my heart seems guarded against agonies, knowing

How days come through nights. I resonate with this alchemy

Of renewal, as life’s form of apology for taking away

Everything that gives us reasons to persist.

[1]. “Mother returns” – A traditional Yorùbá name given to a girl upon her grandmother’s death.

Footprints

From ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Like an enduring filament, we persist,

We defy the passing of seasons,

And the finitude of our bodies

We transcend ages with the tongue’s power

And our progenitors’ poetry, songs,

Delicacies and fabrics of beauty.

Like a walking queue on the sands of time,

Footprints are left to trail along the coastline

Where ancestors last saw their homes

While blind to their new destination.

To lose your hindsight is to find

Your next route in a new name,

A new home, a new fate.

Those with a certain end to their journey

Harbour the dreams of leaving behind

Their footprints, for those willing

To die planting in their nascent roots,

Building on their raw foundation.

Dirty their feet may seem, because

The trodden path was never clean—

Marked by the last witnesses’ footprints.

BIO: Tukur Ridwan (He/Him) is a Nigerian author of three poetry collections, including Silence (Stripes Lit Mag., 2025), and a recipient of the Brigitte Poirson Monthly Poetry Prize (March 2018). His poems were shortlisted in the Bridgette James Poetry Competition (2025), the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize (2020), and were also published in Zoetic Press, Empyrean Literary Magazine, Suburban Witchcraft Magazine, Afrocritik, Kelp Journal, ArtisansQuill, and elsewhere. He loves black tea, sometimes coffee. Twitter/IG @Oreal2kur