Gabriel Awuah Mainoo Eulogises His Mother On Mother's Day

Whispering 
for Cecilia Ama Agyeiwaa

Is that your voice clattering against the swishing bough?
I am listening to the silence in the lessons of journeys
of how leaves wear green caftans in the morning
& at recess, surrender to earth & sunset. I am listening
carefully to the rustle it is
just an old wind giving this moment a name. Like
how you remember each deluge by color. How
you keep record for red,
for the brown blotches on your sternum, how
for nights you floundered like a limb pirouetting in flame.
Those days I tried to save you but, my
knuckles were numb in your ache forgive me
a child is the sizzling breath when a mother is drowning.
I unstitch the shining feather from
the hem of your sepia slit forgive me
everything beautiful is taken for the living. I am
sending you away with water, to make you understand
loss is a vase holding abundance of memory.
Here’s a skiff. The eyes for paddle. To the distance.

Gabriel Awuah Mainoo, special prize winner of Soka Matsubara international Haiku contest, winner of Forty Under 40 Awards for Authorship and Creative Writing and semifinalist of the Jack Grape international Poetry Prize. He's the author of ‘‘Travellers Gather Dust and Lust’’, ‘‘Chicken Wings at the Altar’’, ‟60 Aces of Haiku’’, ‘‘Lyrical Textiles’’ forthcoming, Illuminated Press USA and "Keteke Symphony", Spear Books, Denver, USA. Mainoo serves as project manager for Ghana Writes literary group, creative editor for WGM magazine and African Poetry editor for Better Than Starbucks, USA. Mainoo has appeared in The Cicada’s cry; USA, Attempt at exhausting a place in Leicestershire, London, Writers Space Africa, Missouri Baptist University’s Fireflies’’ Light, Libero American Journal, Spillwords Press, Manchester Metropolitan University's Aah! Magazine, Kalahari Review, Wales haiku Journal, Canada’s Event Magazine, The Mamba, Ghana Writes Journal, The Haiku Foundation, Better than Starbucks, Malawi’s Nthanda Review and, elsewhere. He’s been included in ‘Best New African Poets 2018, 2019 & 2020’ anthology, ‘Bodies & Scars’ anthology; ‘‘Attempt at exhausting a place in Leicester’’ volume, ‘‘Black Bamboo’’ anthology, ‘Poetry Leaves’ bound volume, ‘‘The Cicada’s Cry’’ special edition; moon, ‘‘Quesadilla and other adventures’’ among others. Mainoo is a tennis player in the morning, a student in the afternoon and writer in the evening. He is a Master of Fine Arts candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University.