The Flood

The flood arrived after my father died,

like a man returning from a long journey,

with a thousand boxes and clothes hanging out,

old shoes ripped off at the heels, his feet sticking out;

and fear jutting out of the tips of our fingers.

We watched the sun slide down the church lane,

between a row of trees wearing brown hats;

slowly the clouds cracked open the hiding sky,

long lashes of tears streamed down like arrows.

A school of rain threatened to overrun the flood,

but ended up accompanying it into our house,

growing into a river, a sea and an ocean.

We folded our hands across our chests

and stared at the overrun grave of my father.

My mother knotted her cloth with gritted teeth,

And clenched her bloodshot eyes and her wrinkled skin.

She did not speak, did not give us a sign,

though we smelt the agonising fragrance of her loss

when she saw my father soak in the flood.

Without experience, she dredged from the well of mercy,

rescuing us from the collapse of the universe,

the shattering of the water reservoir of the sky,

destruction of Heaven trees and flowers;

the exposure of the galaxy to the sun without a canopy.

The flood was our regular visitor, our uninvited guest,

like our landlord harassing our parents daily for rent.

Jonathan Ukah is a graduate of English living in the UK. Their poems have been featured in Boomer Literary Magazine, Wildfire Words Literary Magazine, Compass Rose Literary Magazine, North Dakota quarterly, Ariel Chart press, the Pierian, etc. They are also a winner of the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest 2022.