Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
My Mother’s Grave
I wonder what the fuss is all about,
when everything ends on this mound of earth.
When she struggles to be our gem,
the gentle bird that survives the great blitz,
the heroine at the top of the sky’s tome,
The woman at the mountain apices,
the eagle ahead of life’s cutting edge,
surviving the whirling dust of the apocalypse,
when in the end, it’s all this raised ground,
a piece of red sand gathered by sweating men,
surrounded by slant, dry eyes, fallen leaves,
waiting for food and drinks to be shared,
When an orchestra of songs breaks out
for the living to dance and celebrate,
a life gone, a struggle ended?
Life keeps me cold; so did my mother’s death:
a coffin, a band, a church of mourners,
a restaurant of faith in the life after death,
a chasing of a thunderstorm, a priest for a prayer,
for her to travel far away without us.
Then came a secret thrill that it was her time,
not theirs to brutally bite this dirty dust.
What have I done with my holy grief
since my mother’s death robbed her of life,
except to watch her burial over and over,
relieving her life as my little treasure
for this outpouring of tears like a trophy?
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah reads “My Mother’s Grave”
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet living in the United Kingdom with his family. His poems have been published in many literary magazines and anthologies. He won the Alexander Pope Poetry Award 2023 and the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest 2022.