SUNBEAM TRANSFIGURATION
For Morenike
By Odeyemi Idowu
I saw you like one sees
the sun – without looking;
You glow on everything
As you walk towards me
like a Sunbeam on a silent river.
​
The first time our bodies touch,
I felt my blood cuddling
beneath my skin
as the hair on my dark skin stands
Like the Spartan army
Marching to war.
​
The light your presence put in my heart
tells me about God’s fears.
While creating one of us,
He must have been afraid
of putting much magic in one soul:
reason he must have split our body
into two to carry the same soul.
For your light tells me
we are one soul
in different bodies.
Odeyemi Idowu is a Nigerian poet and essayist. His poem Love Only Kills A Poor Boy won the Liverpool based Merak Magazine 2019 annual literary recognition Awards for Best Poem of the Year. He was shortlisted for the 2018 Nigerian Students Poetry Prize and the Christopher Okigbo Poetry prize.