FIYINFOLUWA TIMOTHY OLADIPO
Second Prize - 2020 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Trees'
Sonnet to Palm Sunday
You know it's Easter when all the plantain
Trees are dying. Black fronds burning without
Flame. Hasan with the Madam, sugarcane
Go do better in this our kind of drought.
Our backyard rippling with stillborn shoots, but
All we can quote is that one parable
Of the Sower. In three years, they have come
To look like my father, roots like ankles
Buried deep in London's concrete, leaves curved
Like his spine domed over the Atlantic.
The grass is the shade of green we had bribed
A man with en route to church: a traffic
Warden with a gun the colour of palm
Fronds now being set aflame by Hasan.