This Day These Days

This day these days are quiet days,
I feel a peace that belies the war
Between uncertainty and optimism.

And the days wave when they go by
But they never wait for me.

A million thoughts to dream,
The defeated past beneath my feet,
Time frozen in time, within time,
I keep finding my tested peace
In the eye of the storm.

These days past,
Every fleeting minute
Was a battle trophy.
Old warrior songs kept me company,
Into the future, black and unknown.

And hear now that
I felt no hesitation,
For battle scars are
The glory of an unsung hero.

These days,
There is no need to learn a
New victory song.
I am the victory song.

Time after time,
Fall after graceless fall,
Each faltering step,
I’ll go where no one dreams for me.

160812@lagos.ng/birthdaypoem

Since 2010, I have written a poem every year on my birthday. This past year has been full of mixed joys, laughter and friendship, uncertainty and a little fear, simple joys and little glories, courage and travails, and victory. Always.
In this year’s poem, I have tried to take that crowd of emotions, and the memories, and the long journey and merge them into a victory song.
And as the year drew to a close for me, a few days before my birthday, I learned that people won’t always believe in you. They will readily take the worst of you, and judge you by it. They won’t give you second chances.
And it will hurt. But no matter what happens, never forget that you are your own victory song.
Carpe Diem.

O. Ashiwel Ochui.