Hymn to the Dove.

Burn your insights,

Dim the city’s lights

Where puddles reflect my frights.

Where the crowd dismisses the stagnant water.

A pitch consumes me.

Flee to frosty woods

to die on an unimportant hill.

And sing to love

Sing to the squirrel in the tree,

Write to the dove

Ask how she broke free.

Live not to be buried on a mountain, 

But a hill uninhibited.

Free spirited.

You may have lost all

But the woods.

Butterflies enthrall,

The bird broods.

Man broods too,

Menacingly; corrupting words,

Maliciously; corrupting worlds.

So I sit in the forest free,

Needing no man’s plagued honesty.

Listen to the strum of a guitar,

The hum of a shooting star.

Intoxicate on nature’s blissful qualia,

Slip into rasasvadic reveries,

Intertwined with the trees,

One with the azure sky

Sway to the creek’s lullaby.

Bathe in gold,

Apricity’s descend from heaven,

Flow along the December breeze,

Let the soil meet your knees

By this elysian’s amaranthine awe.

Till the frost melts on your skin,

Forgetting to bite,

As you dissolve in sunlight,

One with the earth.

Ocheni Kazeem Oneshojo is a Nigerian poet and writer exploring love, nature, identity, and social justice. A sophomore English and Literary Studies student at Prince Abubakar Audu University, his works appear in Outside The Box Poetry Magazine, Everscribe Magazine and more. He is also a Pushcart Prize nominee.