A Forest of the Gods

| by Tunji Offeyi |

They stripped the forest bare.

The wind crept in; the roof took flight.

The sky opened, rain flooded the home,

Children soaked in dirty water —

Sickness arrived; the gods must be angry.

Aye, people of the world, you shot at the rabbit

In Igbo Oro, the sacred grove, yet you ask

Ogun, god of Iron, to clear your path.

But Ogun does not

Make way for the disobedient, like the lizard

Warned not to climb the Iroko, yet boasting after the fall.

Unimagined suffering visits Africa because you

laid the ancestral home bare,

So sickness, war, and strife crash upon us like a Tsunami.

Return the land, regrow the forest of the gods,

And let trouble part from our soil.

The gods must be angry! We must act now!