This poem was first published on IS&T on 15th July 2018.
Rose of Jericho
I am waiting for water;
do not blame my Father though he made me
a curling spine of dried roots.
In a home not built for foliage
he did his fatherly duty to pass on
only what is necessary to survive.
The night I thought I became a man
he handed me a drink of warning:
a closed hand holds no water.
Since then I have broken my skin
into soil good for worms,
good for willow trees.
Hardened my bones into a holding container
to become the bucket my grandmother
would put outside to collect rain.
I am a desert fist waiting for water;
do not blame my father.
He was not the stretch of coast
that held the first break of water,
my mother spilling into labour
as the nurses shout germinate, germinate!
Caleb Femi is a British-Nigerian author, film-maker, photographer, and was the Young People’s Laureate for London (2016-2018). His first collection Poor (Penguin) won the 2021 Forward Prizes’ Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection. http://www.calebfemi.com/