(For Dr. Prince Chima Williams, the Red Cap who uses his teeth to break palm kernels for others…)

Do you hear the crackling whispers of the wilting trees,
Their branches brittle as forgotten bones?
Do you see the rivers, once mothers of life,
Now throttled by silt, their waters gasping for breath?
What song does the dying forest sing—
A dirge or a call to arms?

The sun, a fierce warrior, blazes in anger,
Scorching the fields where yams once thrived.
What gods did we anger to make the rains forsake us?
Or is it us, the gods of our ruin,
Turning oceans into graveyards of ice?

How strange is the dance of man!
Burning the air to warm his hearth,
Only to drown his children in rising seas.
Is this progress, to saw the branch we sit upon?
The sky, once blue as a kingfisher’s plume,
Now smudged with smoke—what omen does it bear?

Oh, Earth, you mother of plenty,
Shall we repay your milk with poison?
Shall the cassava fields rot,
And the baobab bow in shame?

When will the wind carry wisdom instead of ash?
When will we trade our greed for grace?
The ancestors’ drums grow silent in the distance,
But do we still hear their warnings,
Or are we deaf to the cry of our own undoing?

©️Patrick Majekodunmi Benjamin