(after seeing a photograph on Flower Rae Shearer‘s wall, overcome by sadness, for the bench)
a lonely bench sits in a park
waiting for stray bottoms
walking through the woods
of life, to sit and make it warm,
only leaves of fall, sad twigs
and sighs of famished trees
keep it company, touching its
wooden ribs and scarred face
with elegies of coming dusk
—-
amu nnadi is author of four collections of poetry, the fire within, winner of the 2002 ANA Gabriel Okara Prize for Poetry, pilgrim’s passage, shortlisted for the 2005 Nigeria Prize for Literature, and through the window of a sandcastle, winner of the 2013 ANA Poetry Prize, runner-up to the 2013 Nigeria Prize for Literature and winner of the 2014 Glenna Luschei African Poetry Book Prize, and the recently completed a field of echoes, a book of almost 300 new poems.
In addition to all this, he is a close friend, mentor, lovely gentleman and teacher.
