Nightly Ritual

by Gbolabo Adetunji, posted in Village

The roosters return to the barns

Darkness engulfs the land

The kids strut home from the soccer fields

The Hoo hoos from the owls declaring the dusk

And every house with a rand to spare

Display the symbol of opulence

A candle lighting

Or status symbol

In the land where power outages reign supreme

The night is colder with no glow in the soul

Everyone races to the place of lumiscence

Teens who need homework done

And youths who want  to feel some warmth

People with passion for the smell of smog

Folks with arson brewing in their minds

Everyone is racing to the candle shop

For what’s more beautiful in utter darkness

Than a  blaze that dances and lasts a while

As darkness permeates the land

Tears are shed under the covers of the night

By those without the means for  flame

Their spirits bending but never breaking

For sleep and death are equalizers of men

But the night never ends

Without the candle shop owners’ rituals

Solemn prayers for darkness to come back

Prayers that nights will be froth with outages

Day after day

For one man’s garbage is another man’s luggage.

© GBOLABO ADETUNJI/ AYOKA

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14 thoughts on “Nightly Ritual”

  1. “for sleep and death are the equalizers of man” – damn, you wrote that so well! i loved the very last line and how it tied things together too. awesome writing

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    1. It is sought of analogous to the phrase “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” or “One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.” All three are idiomatic expressions that simply mean what one person considers worthless may be considered valuable to another person. A good example is the narrative in this poem in which the merchants selling candles really treasure the incessant power outages that occurs in the cities and villages in many parts of Africa. The darkness boost their sales and it is worth several endless days of smiling to the banks. To the populace however, the erratic power failure is nothing to be treasured at all. It is garbage to them.
      This is the two-face coin in the same country with the head facing the suppliers of generators and gasoline , and the tail facing the rest of the people.
      Thank you for taking time to visit, read and comment. I appreciate your feedback. Have a lovely day.

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    1. Hi Cattie, thanks once again for visiting my blog. I am not sure what happened. There is nothing in my spam box. I am wondering if this is related to your previous comment which I recently replied. Thank you for stopping by . Have a wonderful day.

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  4. Such a powerful poem. It’s bizarre something can be so bad to many and yet so good to some. Feels like one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure can be applied to just so many different things and ring true. It all depends on where you are in life. It does sadden me somewhere, that so much in life is based on need because need implies a lacking of something and I always feel that’s such an ambivalent thing.

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    1. That is the world we live in. It can be cold and tricky world we belong to. Yes, we are all needy but we are at different levels of need. But, everyone has something that can help others. We always have a choice to be fixated on our own needs only or to sometime lend a helping hand. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Have a lovely day.

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  5. And another thing: thank you for getting me to think. If there is one thing your writing does, it makes me think. I am very grateful for that. Not everything I read on wordpress or on the internet or anywhere else gets me to really think, and often the things you write do. That’s a great thing to me.

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